2025 Numbers to Know: Superintendent of the Future

Keeping our annual Numbers to Know package relevant and impactful requires developing fresh themes.

With a bevy of turf-related technology introduced in 2024 and headed toward widespread availability in 2025, we unequivocally believed gazing ahead at 2035 and providing a snapshot of the “Superintendent of the Future” represented the best route to providing enlightening, entertaining and essential content.

Big questions surrounding the adoption of artificial intelligence and automation, the skills required to flourish in turf maintenance, and how and where future superintendents will be developed are poised to alter the industry — likely for the better — over the next decade. The late 2020s and early 2030s should be exciting times for industry professionals with growth mindsets.

The content on the following pages blends survey data with human predictions. The art portion of our job resulted in managing editor Matt LaWell and assistant editor Kelsie Horner conducting phone interviews with some of the industry’s brightest leaders about futuristic topics.

Golf Course Industry partnered with Signet Research, a New Jersey-based independent research company, to distribute a 33-question survey to an email list of print and/or digital subscribers who are superintendents, directors of agronomy, assistant superintendents, owners, general managers and directors of golf. Results are based on 214 responses at a 95 percent confidence level.

An annual donation to the Wee One Foundation — a charitable organization established in 2004 in memory of Wayne Otto, CGCS, that helps superintendents and other turf professionals in need — is made in thanks for survey participation.

Guy Cipriano