2025 Numbers to Know: Guessing is expensive

The superintendent of the future won’t make any guesses. At least that’s what USGA customer service agronomist Brian Powell believes. Through data-collecting technology, superintendents will have the information necessary to use exact measurements. 

Technology will provide knowledge on the exact locations to spray, what the expected weather will be, what needs water and more. With rising technology and the incorporation of AI into equipment, golf maintenance facilities will be able to know their budget and supplies aren’t being wasted. 

“Guessing these days is expensive,” Powell says. “It’s very expensive. If you guess and you’re right, that’s wonderful, but it’s a luxury that top facilities can’t afford, and golf courses in the future aren’t going to be able to afford. If you guess and you’re wrong, it’s wasteful, or it delivers the quality level different than what you’re after and that’s just not something that we can afford to do anymore, because it’s wasting precious resources. 

“Data is what gives you the ability to make decisions that are less likely to result in cost overruns, wasting of precious resources, wasting time and the chance to produce better results,” he says. “Specifically, data gives you a chance to produce superior results more frequently.”

Powell, who studied turfgrass management at NC State University and has worked as both a superintendent and a director of agronomy, believes the awareness of a superintendent’s work will increase alongside technology use. “It used to be that golf course superintendents stayed in the back, in the shadows,” Powell says. “Now, because people enjoy the details, that’s changing. Now they want to know, What are some of the metrics that you’re using to make decisions? What are the metrics themselves?”

Powell used the example of the NFL and fantasy football. “You have millions and millions of people that enjoy going online and seeing stats. In golf, they want to see what ShotLink said about the average length hitting a golf ball, perhaps at a certain venue. Golf course maintenance and golf course superintendents, not only are they not immune to that, but they’re also part of that wave.”

For Powell, the go-to tool for data is the USGA’s GS3 smart golf ball. Released in February 2023, it collects data on green speed, firmness, smoothness and trueness. “Anyone that knows the USGA knows we’re always looking to innovate,” Powell says.

Thanks to technologies like the GS3, data-driven decisions can assist the turf industry in more ways than one. “All businesses these days, all Fortune 500 companies, make decisions by the use of data,” Powell says. “Data-driven decision making is how they operate. And that’s pervasive, and that is also filtered into the golf industry, and for good reason. In my opinion, future golf course superintendents will use data as much as they possibly can to make decisions.

“History has proven that the ones that are out there investigating new technologies, new devices, new methods, they’re the ones that typically flourish, and their properties and golf clubs typically flourish as a result.”

Kelsie Horner