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Steve Elkington
Professional golfer
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Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images |
Aussie Steve Elkington is a 23-year veteran of the PGA Tour with 10 Tour victories to his credit, including the 1995 PGA Championship, as well as two Players Championships.
Though the University of Houston alumnus graduated with a degree in recreation, “Elk” took all of the agronomy and horticulture classes he could. A self-proclaimed “superintendent rat,” Elkington can often be found at the Texas A&M turf department, trying to find new ways to kill weeds in his own garden.
Elkington, known to speak his mind, is a favorite of the media, and was even dubbed “best interviewee of all time” by Jim Rome.
For the complete transcript of Elkington’s GCM interview, where he talks about young PGA Tour players’ lack of appreciation for conditions, his hardest agronomy class and his favorite type of superintendent, visit the GCM blog at www.gcm.typepad.com.
— Seth Jones, senior associate editor
"In my career, I’ve seen turf — particular in this more tropical area we live in down in Texas — (I’ve seen) how much that grass has changed in the last 20 years from straight-on common bermuda all the way down to these dwarf-emerald-zoysia or whatever they’re putting on the tees now. You could take a guy out on the tees and ask him, ‘What do you think of my bentgrass tees?’ And he wouldn’t be able to tell you it wasn’t (bentgrass). A lot of the younger generation just show up and they expect the turf to be perfect. They don’t have any idea that it might have rained last week and made the grass puff up like a lettuce leaf. It’s not their interest — it’s a different era. Growing up in Australia and going through the summer, when we didn’t have fairway watering, and your ball would run 150 yards, you had to learn to curve the ball the opposite way of the contour just to keep it in play. I think it was to our advantage to know more about agronomy back then for those types of situations. Americans sometimes get fixated on the color of the grass. I always say: If you like to shoot pool, what the hell difference does the color (of) felt make? " |
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