It's Not Just About Golf

We had the annual Pinicon Golf Outing last week. Weather was ideal and everyone in attendance seemed to have a great time.

On the drive home I thought about the evolution of this event. It began when the Douglas Township duo of John Sullivan and Herb Johanns offered to host a golf day at their expense for the Pinicon Team. 

I personally did not like to golf but most of the crew does so we agreed to take off a workday afternoon, park the trucks, tractors, wrenches, and calculators so we could test the correlation between golf score and alcohol consumption.

For the record, our experience suggests it is strongly positive.    

I always suspected Johnny and Herb's motivation was to fill a void in their activity calendar. If well received, the golf outing could be counted on as a repeatable and fun filled remedy to staying occupied during the dog days of summer.

Or maybe Johnny and Herb just liked golfing and drinking beer with friends.

At any rate, twenty some years later, Johnny and Herb have gone to that eternal Country Club in the sky and the Pinicon Golf Outing is the high point of the space between planting and harvest, enthusiastically anticipated and attended.

There are passionate golfers who enjoy the sport and get satisfaction from the competition and refinement of their skills. And though our event has a couple of those, the universal appeal of this gathering is the relaxed interaction among all attendees and the mutual appreciation that exists between the different factions, employee/employer, landowner/tenant, customer/vendor. 

The employee, grateful for the respect and concern of their employer, the appreciative landowner whose farm receives a high level of care, the vendor who benefits from a loyal and fair-minded customer, and of course the thankful farm business owners who know it is the efforts and cooperation of numerous individual propelling their growth. 

I have frequently stated, collaboration is an essential element of success. The golf outing has become an opportunity to acknowledge individuals who have contributed.

It's not just about golf.

Jim