2024 Numbers to Know: Introduction

Play, more play and even more play. Less time to work around play. Numerous stakeholders to appease. Emails, texts and calls. New products and evolving technology to learn. Get the revised budget done yet?

Leading the maintenance of a golf course is a big responsibility.

As the golf surge enters its fourth full year — has it really lasted that long? — we decided to use our annual Numbers to Know survey and accompanying stories to examine how golf course superintendents view the totality of what their jobs entail. Numbers plus stories are a powerful combination.

This section also includes our annual glance at industry finances. Little suggests 2024 will provide a respite for golf maintenance teams.

How did we accumulate the numbers?

We collaborated 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 247 responses with a 6.2 percent margin of error.

In addition to the survey, senior contributing writers Lee Carr and Rick Woelfel conducted phone interviews with superintendents at facilities with different ownership models for human stories accompanying the data.

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.

Consider the following pages a big section about a big job.

— Guy Cipriano and Matt LaWell

sponsored by