Featured Athletes /// Nick Rackers, State Tech
Big Leagues of Landscaping Story By: Scot Thompson Photography By: Nick Rackers
The perfection of a green and gorgeous golf course, one where not a single blade of grass seems out of place, and one both beautiful and challenging enough to host a major professional tournament, is an expectation of both players and followers of the game. But who is it that achieves that perfection while dealing with long hours, unpredictable weather, insects, wandering snakes, demand- ing professional golfers and hordes of fans trampling your work? For Nick Rackers, an instructor in the Commercial Turf & Grounds Management program (CT&G) at State Technical College in Linn since Louisville, Kentucky, in mid-May, provided a week-long crash course in what it takes to make a major professional golf tournament sparkle. or heard on the golf course, but when you watched it on TV, it has to play well on TV. It has to look good on TV. That’s what we did. We made sure of that.” Rackers and Ryan Klatt, the chair of the CT&G department at State
Tech, led a contingent of seven others with ties to the Linn campus as part of a volunteer groundskeeping crew that eventually grew to
24 /// August 2024
over a hundred at Valhalla. ed a position there as Assistant Groundskeeper after his 2022 graduation. It was Wilt’s invitation to his alma mater back in Linn that led
Rackers and Klatt to assemble the State Tech crew of student in- terns, assistants-in-training, alumni and instructors who helped whip the Louisville course into pristine condition, and keep it that way for a week, not only for the exacting professional golfers and fans who descended on Valhalla, but for the millions more who watched on television around the world. “You hear how Disney World and Disneyland have to look perfect, and this is kind of what that was,” Rackers says of the intense and grueling week at Valhalla. “You had to have that level of meticulous- ness. I’m glad it was only a week, because I don’t know if I could keep that level up all the time.” The State Tech group worked various positions throughout the week, but all of them worked long hours while catching naps back at ended around 9 p.m., often working under the glare of light towers
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