2022 Numbers to Know

Do us – and yourself – a favor and share this section with a few confidants. Your owner. A board member. The general manager. Spouse. Young person. That grizzled neighbor.

Want somebody to understand the people and finances involved in producing the playing surfaces driving the current golf surge? Show them data. And we have the data. Plus, a few practical stories and ideas to accompany it.

For the first time in our 11 years of collecting industrywide data, we examined the composition of golf course maintenance teams. The GCSAA does a commendable job of collecting data about its members. But much less is known about the hourly, part-time and seasonal workers required to maintain and protect a golf facility’s greatest asset. Who are they? Where do they come from? How old are they? How much are they being paid? We start the process of answering those questions in this section. Perhaps the numbers resemble the composition of your team. Or perhaps they will give you ideas about groups to target when assembling current and future teams.

The survey also features annual staples such as recent and historic budgetary data. Save the numbers. Use them to help make the case to get what your department deserves.

Golf Course Industry collaborates with Signet Research, a New Jersey-based independent research company, to produce this report by distributing a 34-question survey to an email list of 4,317 print and/or digital subscribers who are superintendents or directors of agronomy. Results are based on 226 responses with a margin of error of +/- 6.5 percent.

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 and Matt LaWell

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