It takes a certain type

After years — decades, really — writing about the work lives of golf course superintendents, I’ve come to the sobering realization that I don’t have what it takes to become one.

This is more a confession than a revelation. And it has to do less with the requisite knowledge base than with character type and profile. To be sure, all those years I spent as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst had nothing to do with campus offerings in horticulture, turfgrass or agronomy. My only affiliation then with the university’s famed Stockbridge School was that I regularly passed the building it occupied on my way from my Political Science Department in Thompson Hall to the Campus Center for more coffee. If these days I get introduced as “Dr.” or “Professor” when giving golf industry talks, I correct any potential misimpression about the field in which I am technically certified.

Yet 40 years of articles, books, podcasts and consulting on golf course design, management, setup and renovation have given me a distinct perspective on the character traits needed to thrive on the job — or in some cases, merely to survive. I judge things less by the nutrient levels or thatch layer that superintendents achieve, or how consistent a topdressing program they maintain over a season. Instead, what I see is their ability to adjust, establish personal equilibrium, handle difficult circumstances and respond to undue demands by people in positions to overrule them, even when those same folks don’t have the technical knowledge to know what it takes to do the job.

I have seen all kinds. Folks with enormous patience. Workaholics with no sense of “enough is enough” because they too readily compensate for an utter lack of discipline by piling up more hours. I’ve seen greenkeepers who didn’t show up until 9 a.m. and changed cups only three times a week. I’ve seen drug addicts, embezzlers and those more interested in side hustles than executing their main job. I can recall superintendents who were afraid to grow new grass and those who thought it a virtue to push the turf until it came within an inch of dying out. And I’ve seen course managers who could not wait to take on new tasks and teach their crew another skill set.

Superintendents answer to a wide variety of people as part of their everyday routine, including a few too many folks whose agronomy knowledge is limited to the latest article they just read online. Worse yet are those golfers who mistake their wealth or playing skill for the qualifications to suggest course alterations — like the need to install flash white bunker sand or their advice about the proper way to battle ash tree decline.

If I were a superintendent, I would have a very hard time heeding my own advice in such cases, which is simply to “pretend to listen.” But even those annoying encounters don’t come close to the real test of a superintendent’s character — dealing with folks who have the power to make or break you professionally.

It might be a general manager whose contract pays a bonus for all those profitable Monday outings, which means no “downtime” for the course or grounds crew to recover. Or the meddling owner who paid too much for his daily-fee course and now monitors the staff he mistrusts through cameras installed at various workstations. Equally frustrating is the small, determined group of members convinced that the superintendent has suddenly “gone stupid” and is holding the club back from top-100 status.

Of course, there are lots of emotionally balanced superintendents whose jobs are reasonably well-paid and who can delegate enough time to get through the “100 days of mid-season hell” without forgetting the names of their kids. Like everything else in life, the industry has its own hierarchy and class structure. For every well-paid, comfortable position there are many more where the pay is low, the hours long, the physical demands great and the sense of emotional fulfillment lacking.

In that way, the golf world is akin to academia, where for every esteemed professor at a Harvard or a Stanford teaching two courses a semester in their specialty, there are many more at low-paid service schools teaching eight courses a year of remedial writing and general studies. No wonder folks quit, burn out or have trouble recruiting.

Given the job’s demanding nature, it’s all the more reason to admire those who stick with the trade for the duration of their working lives. It takes considerable strength of character to be a superintendent.