Teddy Ruppenstein senior project LSCC

Weekly reflection #3 The last full week at the course was surely and exciting one. This week I got the chance to take on more responsibility on the course and it’s very freeing. Craig had me doing certain jobs like opening the driving range and picking the range all on my own. It’s a really great feeling to start to become apart of things. With any job it takes time to become part of the staff and learn everything that your going to have to do. I got the chance to see some new things as well as keeping with the old jobs.  The course had a busy week with tough light league, lakes region championships, and the first big outing of the year. Twilight league is the courses adult weekly league where pairs of two go out every Tuesday night for three weeks hopefully to win in the end. It’s not the most labor intensive event but it involves things like USGA handicaps and other factors that have to be worked out by Craig and Aaron in the pro shop. We also had our golf championship for the la

Tuesday, May 23 Last day of senior project. Sad that it’s over but now the final fun festivities begin. Today I did some editing work on my blog posts after mike looked them over for me. My paper is just about finished and I have started working on my booth. I’m thinking that I’ll bring my clubs up and set up a putting station. Along with this I will show all the pictures I took from the project on a computer. Little bit of a boring day but thats life. Hopefully tomorrow everything goes as planned. I had a lot of fun over these past three weeks I’ve had a lot of fun working at LSCC and it’s really sad to see it go. This will always be a possible career path for me down the road. I’ll be sure to make some visits to play golf at one of my favorite courses.

Monday, May 22 Today was the beginning of the real work of senior project, writing the essay and getting the project ready to show. Now that I had finished my required hours I decided it was time to start working on the final pieces of my project. I started with finishing up my weekend reflection and then got started on the thousand word essay. I wish I could be at the course but I have all my hours so I decided my time would be better spent working on the written proportion of my project. It took me a few hours with some procrastinating but I finished everything I set out to finish. Tomorrow I’ll work on my booth as well as my presentation. Hopefully I can pull it all off over the next two days.

Friday, May 18 As the week winded down so does the project. I go around doing my normal morning jobs, picking the range and helping around the shop. It was a quiet day so not to many bags needed to be taken out of the bag room. Craig had me fold some cards but otherwise I was free to go play some golf. Ryan. And I went out and played for a bit and then I headed back to campus for a final golf team meeting. Looks like these three weeks are coming to an end and it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot here and really happy I was able to do this. Daily hours : 2 Total hours : 54

Thursday, May 17 Craig had me come to the course early this morning because it was the first major outing of the year. The black fly open was happening at lake Sunapee country club and over 120 people would be attending the charity golf event. I got there around eight am and there was a lot to do. I started out by helping pull all the golf carts out and stocking them with pencils, tees, waters, and scorecards. Once all the carts were organized by tee of it was time to start registering people. At nine o’clock people started rolling in. My job was to drive around in a cart taking peoples bags from there car and bringing them to their golf carts. After about an hour of this it was time for tee of. Craig got on the microphone sending all the players to their tees which quieted down  the course for the rest of the day. Since there was an outing there was very little too do, so I just stayed in the pro shop and helped around there until practice. Daily hours : 3 Total hours : 52

Wednesday, May 16 Today was a pretty big day. The lakes region championship would be teeing off at two thirty. I would be playing alongside three other proctor kids for the title. I got the the course a little later and started off with some light working in the pro shop. Folding cards and unpacking deliveries. Then Craig had me to go check pin placements for the tournament as well as practice some chipping and putting. After this I went down to the range to start warming up and met the team at one. I didn’t play my best round and we ended up coming in third. All in all was a great season and I’m really proud of the team for being regular season champs even though we couldn’t be individual champs. Daily hours : 3 Total hours : 49

Tuesday, May 15 I woke up today to on and off rain showers that really put a damper on my day. I headed down to the course at nine thirty too start helping around. There wasn’t too many jobs but Craig kept me busy enough. Ryan and I went out and changed all the water coolers around the course for the upcoming tournaments that will be happening. Between the lakes region championship and the black fly open things are going to be very hectic around here. We set up the new flagsticks for the tourney and then went out and picked the range again. The rain steadily poured down but we pushed on and had practice in the rain because tomorrow is the big day. It’s going to be a tough one but I think we can win. Daily hours : 4 Total hours : 46

Monday May, 14 This week is a special one because we have lakes region championships on Sunday. I arrived at the course at nine thirty and worked around the pro shop for a little while. Eventually I went down and picked the range with Ryan. Two people makes he job go by much faster and we had the whole range picked in about an hour. After all the balls were cleaned and put in the bin we headed back up to the pro shop to head out and play for a little bit. We got a solid round in before practice that day to help get ready for the championships. This week is going to an exciting one with the championship as well as the course hosting a large tournament on Thursday. Daily hours: 4 Total hours : 42

Weekly reflection this week as my thrust increased I was given more jobs to do learn around the course. Over the past Few weeks I have become apart of the staff a little bit more. Craig sends me out to learned jobs that hopefully I’ll be able to do on my own towards the end of my project. This week I got to get out and do some pretty interesting things. I got the chance to learn how to operate a range picker which has been a lifelong dream of mine until I did it and realized it gets a little unexciting. I learned how to set up a grass driving range and what goes into deciding where it will be and weather the grass will grow back before the end of the season. I learned how to tow a golf cart as well as change a tire on one which is fairly similar to changing a car tire. Doing all these jobs have brought me closer to the other employees and I’m starting to blend in there as a regular worker. I go out most days with Ryan, Craig and Aaron and they teach me all there daily jobs as well a

Friday, May 11 Today I arrived at the course at nine checking in at the pro shop with Craig. I was in the pro shop for most of the morning, and about an hour in the assistant pro fainted. Something was seriously wrong with him and he could barely make it up stairs too his room. We got him up there and eventually with some hydration and sugar he started to feel better. After this interesting turn of events I went down to the range to help pick balls for an hour. Next Craig let me go out and do some short game work on the chipping green so I could get some practice in before my match against Tilton. We ended up sweeping Tilton winning the match with ease. Daily hours : 5 Total hours : 38

Thursday May 10th Today was a lot of hard fun work. I showed up to the course and Craig had a full list of jobs he needed me too do around the course. I started out by setting up the driving range moving it from the matts to the grass. Then Ryan thought me how to pick the range and clean the balls. He did the first run but had me do the second two. It took us about an hour and a half to get it all done. After this we headed up to a members house to tow his personnel golf cart to maintenance. I got the chance to learn how to change a tire on a golf cart. For the rest of the day just worked around the shop until I started practice. Daily hours : 5 Total hours: 33

Wednesday may 9 There comes a point when golfers just get golfed out. Today I just couldn’t play well. I worked in the morning a bit in the pro shop and met Tyler Chaffee on the course in the afternoon and we played eighteen before my match against Vermont academy. Somehow I pulled it together for the match and shot a decent score but today was not exciting at all and I ended up heading back to campus for a quick bite before the match. No one was at the course and there weren’t many jobs to do. Hopefully tomorrow brings more excitement. Daily hours : 4 Total hours : 28

Tuesday May eighth I arrived at the course at ten am starting by opening up the driving range. After that I had to go and get all of the bag stands so that we could paint them with a fresh coat. After this Craig had me test out some of the new putters that they had recently gotten. I worked with the putters for a while until Ryan and I went out and played golf. Craig was showing me the difference between head weighted putters and shaft weighted putters. Head weighted usually have more of a rounded swing too then while shaft weighted have a more back and forth swing too them. The feel is preferential but I mostly like shaft weighted putters. I also leaned towards putters with a mallet head finding that my puting was more accurate when the head was larger. After this practice begun and two hours later I was on my way out. Daily hours : 4 Total hours : 24

Monday, May 7 First day of week two began at nine when I got too the course. The morning consisted of helping Craig and Aaron around the pro shop with jobs like folding scorecards and unpacking things in the shop. At around ten thirty I went out to start demoing some new wedges and Craig sent me out with the goal of learning about wedge sizing. The wedges I was using were titleist vokey wedges which have an online test to see which set of wedges will best fit your swing. I used a 52 degree, 56 degree, and a 58 degree. Each on had its different strengths but overall I found that the 52 and 58 were the better clubs too have in your bag. The 52 was great from distance and the 58 had great control near the green allowing me to put spin on it when I needed too and avoid things like humps in the green. I finished as usual by playing a round of golf with Ryan before practice. Daily hours : 4 Total hours : 20

With something like golf there are always wonders that occur behind the scenes to make the conditions as perfect as possible. My senior project this week especially has shown me how a golf course gets ready for the season. This mostly includes mornings of very hard work followed by afternoons of easy work or even sneaking in eighteen holes with some of the guys working there. My first couple mornings were filled with the taxing jobs of putting down the water hazard stakes around the course as well as putting up the midway net at the driving range. Both are things that go almost unnoticed when playing golf but having done the job it gives you a whole new perspective on the game. Every time I see a red or yellow stake on a course I’ll remember when I had too spend two hours in the hot sun learning exactly where to put them. Every time I drive a ball into the net I’m going to think about the time I had too painstakingly clip in all four hundred rusty clips that hole the net up while gett

Day four Today was a more relaxed day. I got to the course around nine thirty and began my day by demoing the new Taylor Made clubs that the pro shop just got and comparing them to the Titleist clubs I had tried at the beginning of the week. The Taylor Mades in my opinion were far superior and added about twenty yards of distance to my drives. They allowed me to have more control over the ball so that I could put a controlled hook or fade on the ball if I wanted too. After this I went out on the course and played nine holes with Ryan one of the people who works at the course. I left around eleven then came back at two too start warming up for my match against KUA. I played a really good match and it was close until the end.  I unfortunately made a couple bad mistakes and their number number two golfer got the better of me. I wasn’t happy and we didn’t get back until about seven but besides losing the day was great and the chance to play golf this much has really had an effect on my g

Day Three I got to the course around seven forty five in the morning for one of the more taxing Jobs I’d do my entire project. The driving range has a river running through the middle of it so we had to put up a ten foot high net that keeps balls from going into it. We loaded the massive net into the truck and headed to the range. It was about eighty degrees and the black flies were just beginning to show up. We started one by one using rusty clips to hang the net up. It started to rain after a bit making the job that much harder but a little bit cooler. After finishing the first to panels I fell into the river which was actually a little refreshing. It took a while but in two hours we picked the range of all the balls that the cart had missed and finished off the day with a round of golf. 4 hours today 12.5 total

Day Two Today was a much more grueling day of work at the golf course. I arrived at eight thirty to start laying down hazard stakes. Hazard stakes for those who don't know are sticks that mark where there is a water hazard and the color of the stake determines how your allowed to play it. We went around the whole course hiking into marshes in the eighty degree heat. It was definitely a hard job but I learned a lot about what goes into the decision on what kinds of hazard stakes to put on each type of hazard as well as where to put them. It's usually red by where the lawn mowing can cut so that when the tall rough grass grows the stakes will still be visible enough while keeping the taller grass inside the hazard. Overall it was a short but grueling day where I learned a lot about golf course management. 2.5 hours today 8.5 hours total

Day one at Lake Sunapee country club The day started at about eight forty five when I arrived at the golf course. I got in and started with a few more simple jobs like unpacking clubs and folding up score cards but eventually I was able to go out on the course and demo some of the new irons the club had just got. One of my jobs at the course is to demo new clubs and write reviews on them for the web site. Today I played with the new Titleist AP3 set as well as a few of there newer model drivers. I went out and played nine holes with the club as taking note of all the things I noticed about it that were different from my own to help understand and be able to review the club better. Overall today was a generally more low key day but tomorrow things will begin to ramp up at the course. As the weather warms up and more people come to play golf there is going to be a lot more work around the golf course such as setting up hazard stakes and putting up the driving range net. Great day on th