Southview Scene November 2018 From the Director of Golf by Josh Luehmann We have not had the best fall for golf but we are still going! Take advantage of the days we have left because there are not very many left. Even though the golf season is winding down, we still have a number of exciting social events planned for the remainder of the year! Be on the lookout for more information to come on these events. November & December Clubhouse Hours While the golf course is open we will continue with regular business hours. After the course closes for the season, all dining will move upstairs to the Main Bar. We will be open for lunch Tuesday through Friday from 11:00am 2:00pm and for dinner Wednesday through Saturday starting at 5:00pm. On Saturdays the clubhouse will not open until 5:00pm for dinner service. The clubhouse will be closed for member dining on Sundays and Mondays. New Golf Course Superintendent I am extremely excited to announce the hiring of Mike Paape as Southview Country Club s new Golf Course Superintendent. Mike has a wealth of knowledge in the turfgrass industry and comes to us from St. Croix National Golf & Event Center in Somerset, Wisconsin. For the past three seasons Mike has been the Head Golf Course Superintendent at St. Croix National. During his tenure there he has made dramatic improvements to the golf course and greens and the golf course is now relevant again. Prior to St. Croix National, Mike was the Lead Assistant Superintendent and Spray/Irrigation Technician for eight seasons at Midland Hills Country Club. Mike grew up in South St. Paul and his career in the golf course industry began at Southview over 20 years ago. Mike s passion for this job and Southview was undeniably evident throughout the interview process. Growing up within miles of Southview and starting his career here, Mike views the Golf Course Superintendent position at Southview as his dream job. Mike s familiarity with Southview and the golf course will help him as he transitions into this role. He provided the Search Committee a very detailed golf course assessment and action plan for next season and the seasons ahead. Mike will officially start with us in January and he will come in with a game plan from day one. Again, I am very excited about Mike Paape joining our team at Southview Country Club. Below are a few comments from Mike To say that I am excited to join this team at Southview Country Club would be the understatement of the century for me personally. Coming back to where it all began and truly where I always envisioned a perfect world ending up is absolutely a dream come true scenario for me. In between time spent here at Southview I ve been able to fill my tool belt with many new strategies to implement and continuously enhance the overall experience for the membership at Southview for many years to come. I look forward to reconnecting with some of you, and meeting most of you in the coming months. See you on the course! - Mike Golf Shop Hours November Hours Tuesday - Friday 10:00am - 2:00pm Toys for Tots Southview will once again be a drop off site for the Toys for Tots program sponsored by the U.S. Marine Tuesday - Friday December Hours Corps and KARE 11. Please help us 10:00am - 2:00pm reach this year s goal by bringing a Sunday 10:00am - 2:00pm new and unwrapped toy to the club office when you visit us. We will Saturday & Monday Closed start taking donations on Sunday, December 2nd.
2 From the Club President by Pat Sullivan Thanks to all who attended the Annual Shareholders Meeting on October 23rd. For those of you unable to attend, the following is my presentation at the annual meeting: To say the 2018 golf season has been a difficult one would be like calling Hole Number 5 an easy par 3, greatly understated! To recap: we had 15-17 inches of snow in mid- April which delayed the opening of the course until May 1 one of the latest openings ever. Shortly thereafter we lost Frank Fiorito, our long time golf professional and golf ambassador. In addition to losing Frankie we lost a lot of what Frank was a symbol of here at the club, greeting and customer service. A few weeks later, DeAnna Stevens, our Director of Sales & Hospitality, left for another position outside the golf industry. As these things were occurring we watched as the condition of our golf course deteriorated, which subsequently led to the dismissal of our golf course superintendent. Later in the summer our Director of Catering, Kathy Gosiger, left for another position as well. In September we put out the annual survey and predictably we got some severe criticism about several areas relating to the club (course conditions, driving range, customer service, tee times, etc.). Follow all this up with an unusually wet September and October resulting in a short fall golf season and you have a pretty good recipe for disaster. I said to the Board in July that we could not come to this meeting in October and shrug our shoulders and chalk it up to a bad year. So what have we done and what are we going to do? Let s start with the condition of the golf course. I would be remiss at this time if I did not publicly acknowledge our Greens Committee Chair Scott Fenwick. Many of you are unaware of this but I shudder to think where we would be without Scott s passion for our golf course, his knowledge and research capabilities. I can still remember the night in June when I got a text from Scott referring me to a website and saying check this out I think this is what is happening with the course. The website was on turf diseases and basil rot anthracnose in particular. I looked and wholeheartedly concurred that if this wasn t what we had it was a close cousin. We then went to Josh and he concurred and the decision was made to immediately get a second opinion from someone outside the club. This is when the University of Minnesota was brought in and ultimately confirmed we indeed had the basil rot and a plan was devised as to how to proceed. So thank you Scott! Back to what we have done, we dismissed our superintendent and began the search for a replacement. Being it was late August and we were well aware we would not be able to secure a new superintendent in time for the close of the golf season, Josh and I immediately met with our two assistant superintendents to ensure they felt they could adequately finish the golf season. Both Dennis Frick and Tim Richter felt confident that they could handle these duties. Again I d be remiss if I didn t publicly acknowledge the tremendous job Dennis and Tim have done with the course. Keep in mind we lose much of our seasonal staff when school starts and we were down one fulltime position as well. In addition to regular duties we had XGD and aeration projects to complete. My thanks to Dennis, Tim and their staff for the tremendous amount of time and effort they have given under difficult circumstances. We posted the superintendent job in early September with a deadline of September 30th for applications. We received over 25 applications from literally around the country and around the world. We paired the applicants down to the 7 who we thought to be the best candidates. As part of the interview process, each applicant was asked to provide a written assessment of the golf course prior to the interview. The days of interviews were long days and my thanks to Josh, Brendon Cody, Scott Fenwick and Barb Jerhoff for serving on the committee to find our next superintendent. After discussion by the committee, we selected Mike Paape as our new Superintendent. I can assure you Mike is coming with the passion, drive and confidence to make significant improvements to our greens next year and knock all other aspects of the golf course out of the park. I learned through the interviews and assessments that the golf course did not get to the condition it is in overnight but I am extremely confident Mike is the person to in time return our golf course to the reputation it proudly had for many years. I was asked at the meeting why the Greens Committee was not kept up to speed during the season on the situation with the Superintendent and going forward what will the relationship between the new Superintendent and the greens committee be.
3 My response was it was strictly my call to first only involve Josh and then just the Board of Directors. It has been my experience that when a personnel decision is going to be made on a top level position it is best to keep it at the highest level as the more people knowing about it the more likely word/rumors will spread. I met with Josh in July and we set up measurable standards that we expected for the golf course and a window in which to improve these standards. These standards were not just green related. As I described to Josh and the Board, our members were not accepting the condition of the greens they were merely tolerating them. It was expectations that all other aspects of the golf course needed to be pristine. After the window Josh and I met to discuss where we were at with the golf course. At that time we had approximately one third of the survey responses back and between the condition of the course and the responses in the survey it was determined that we had to let our Superintendent go. As for the relationship between the new Superintendent and the Committee, I am fully confident our new Superintendent will work in the full spirit of cooperation with the Greens Committee going forward. This brings us to the question of what we as members can do. With any issue or problem, it is simple; we can be part of the problem or part of the solution. We have listened to your comments and major concerns on the survey and we have addressed them. on the green and roll a putt in for birdie. Now we charge to the back nine for two reasons 1) God hates a quitter and 2) we now feel we got it figured out and we are going to take the back nine down! That s where we are at folks, we are at the turn, we had a bad front nine (this past season) but we have made the necessary tweaks and we are going to take the back nine down (2019). There is no doubt in my mind we lost some of the pride in our golf course through this year. There was general apathy toward the course due to the condition it was in for much of the season. We need to get back to that status and the way to do it is we need all members back next year and on board supporting not just Mike Paape, our new Superintendent, but all of our new people in their new roles and be here when the pride of Southview is restored. I hope we have answered all of your questions but if there are additional questions feel free to contact me and I ll be more than happy to answer them. I thank you for your support this year and I really hope to see all of you back at Southview in 2019. Pat Congraulations to our other members who made a hole-in-one in October! Ryan Olsen on hole #2, 210 yards with a 4 iron on October 24! Mark Thompson on October 6th, 157 yards with a 7 iron on hole #13! Greg Boner on hole #5, 215 yards with a 3 wood on October 6th! Turkey Please join us for our last Happy Hour of 2018! Friday, November 16th 4:30 pm to 8:00 pm In the Wedgewood $17.95 ++ per person Bingo begins at 6:00 PM Thanksgiving Themed Buffet Please Call the Office to Make Reservations! 651-451-6856 Let me put it in golf analogy, we ve all had a bad front nine where nothing is going right and as we approach the 9th tee we are thinking about quitting after nine as just nothing is happening. Then we make a little tweak to the swing and hit one down the middle, knock one Congrats to Reece McCaulley for making her first Hole in One on Hole #2, 174 yards with a 4 Hybrid! Witnesses: Bella McCaulley & Sam Udovich!
4 From the 19th Hole by Martin Hook As the season is winding down, you ll start seeing more and more events at the clubhouse. Keep your eyes open for the upcoming emails and flyers! One flyer will be sent along with this newsletter and that is for our first annual Beer is Cold day. With the course closing soon, keep your eyes on the weather reports because after we get a half inch of snow, we ll be giving away free beer all day! See the flyer for more details. There were a few really fun events in October. Southview s Revenge was another great Tournament the golf staff put together. Many members attended the Oktoberfest Happy Hour. Oh wow, were the Jolly Huntsmen a fun band! On the 25th there was an Italian themed date night in the Augusta room. All of the tables were reserved and it was a smash hit!! Everyone loved the music and Chris Laplante was a great chef, dishing up entrees on the fly in the Alcove. And the price was awesome! The next date night will be on Friday, November 30th! Make your reservations early! November and December bring us to the end of the calendar year and there are still lots of events to look forward to. With hunting season starting, Saturday, Nov. 3rd will be the Hunting Widows Night Out in the main bar. The ever popular Turkey Bingo will be on Friday, Nov 16th. Thanksgiving Day brunch will be on Thursday, Nov 22nd. There will be another member event in early December but details are hazy at this point. We ll get details out via email as soon as we have them. Brunches will continue on all of the Sundays in December. Santa will be attending the brunch on the 9th of Dec. Christmas brunch will be on the 25th. And on December 31st to round out the year, Southview will once again have a special NYE dinner in the main bar. It s been a great season and we already can t wait till next year! Make sure to book your holiday parties and to make your reservations for events well in advance! Check out the end of the season Wine Sale! All prices are lower than November 16th Turkey Bingo November 22nd Thanksgiving Day Brunch November 30th Date Night December 2nd, 16th, 23rd Sunday Brunch December 9th Sunday Santa Brunch December 14th Golf Shop Holiday Party December 25th Christmas Day Brunch December 31st New Year's Eve
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November Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1 2 Happy Hour 3 4 5 6 7 Prime Rib 8 9 Happy Hour 10 Wedgewood Only All Day After Fore Menu 11 12 13 14 Prime Rib 15 16 Turkey Bingo 17 18 19 20 21 Prime Rib 22 23 24 Thanksgiving Day Brunch 11:00am-2:00pm 25 26 27 28 Prime Rib 29 30 SVCC Date Night Hunting Widows Night Out Main Bar Main Bar Main Bar Main Bar December Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1 Main Bar 2 3 4 5 Prime Rib 6 7 8 Sunday Brunch Buffet at 2:00 PM 9 10 11 12 Prime Rib 13 14 15 Santa Sunday Brunch at 2:00 PM 16 17 18 19 Prime Rib 20 21 22 Sunday Brunch Buffet at 2:00 PM 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Sunday Brunch at 2:00 PM 30 31 New Year's Eve Special Limited Menu Only Only Only Christmas Day Brunch 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM Golf Shop Holiday Party Main Bar Main Bar Main Bar Main Bar