
Guy Cipriano (2)
No spectator sport connects industry professionals like football. Back in January 2020, before life and the golf business suddenly changed, Golf Course Industry focused its year-commencing survey on the superintendent lifestyle.
We asked readers about their hobbies away from the golf course. Watching sports led the list with a 72 percent response rate. To keep the questionnaire compact, we didn’t dig into the sports they enjoy watching. Anybody who has spent 59 seconds chatting with an industry professional knows football dominates the sports dialogue.
Three days before the games were played to determine Super Bowl LIX participants, a training event for rising turf leaders debuted at Fox Chapel Golf Club in suburban Pittsburgh. Dave Delsandro, the co-founder of Agronomic Advisors and former superintendent at nearby Oakmont Country Club, opened the Future Leaders Academy by asking attendees to introduce themselves, where they work, their job title and their favorite NFL team.
Every attendee worked at a private club and most of them were assistant superintendents. Their pro football rooting interests proved more diverse, with geographically distant teams such as the San Francisco 49ers and New England Patriots entering the icebreaking exercise. Fox Chapel is a leafy suburb dotted with expansive stone and gated residences in Steelers Country. Most of the clubs represented resided in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, although an ambitious New England duo flew to western Pennsylvania for the academy.
The football question brought connectivity and levity to a day filled with serious discussions. Created by Delsandro and his business partner Jeff Corcoran and Bloom Golf Partners founder Tyler Bloom, the Future Leaders Academy is designed to provide assistant superintendents and other aspiring turf managers with you-don’t-learn-this-in-school lessons as they seek to get better at their current jobs to advance their careers.
Corcoran was on a consulting assignment, so Oakmont superintendent Mike McCormick joined Delsandro, Bloom and AQUA-AID Solutions’ Bill Brown at Fox Chapel, where Devin Rice enters his second season as superintendent overseeing an enchanting Seth Raynor layout. Besides passing references to turf stress and water management, the seven-hour interactive training session avoided scientific education. Yes, technical skills are ultra important, but they are mastered through repetition and the industry infrastructure includes an abundance of discussions about pests, disease, weeds, growth rates, irrigation, sand, mowing, rolling and cultivation. How and where to direct one’s focus to successfully take the next career step remains a murky matter.
From left, Delsandro, Bloom, Brown and McCormick.
Delsandro and McCormick ascended at Oakmont, a giant incubator of skilled and hardened turf talent preparing to host a record 10th U.S. Open in June. The pair used anecdotes from their experiences to emphasize the best way to prepare for your next job is to succeed in your current job. “When are you going to be ready for your next step?” McCormick rhetorically asked attendees. “You’re going to know that yourself.”
Considering the expanding scope of operations, political pressures, and rapidly escalating revenues and expenses, superintendents at well-funded clubs are being pulled in numerous non-turf directions. This means assistant superintendents are increasingly responsible for leading teams executing daily agronomic tasks. Delsandro considers the evolution “leadership without authority,” and he believes assistants have more impact on an operation than they realize. “The pace, vibe and attitude of a place mirrors the assistant more than the superintendent,” he said.
Pace, vibe and attitude are parts of a workplace culture, the topic of a session led by Bloom, a former superintendent-turned-industry recruiter. Developing a positive culture, according to Bloom, is often as simple as providing employees with consistent feedback. “People want to be guided, they want direction,” he said.
And they want to be guided by strong leaders, a group Brown has observed as a follower of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, a pair of former Navy SEALs and authors of “Extreme Ownership.” Brown introduced the book and Willink’s and Babin’s philosophies in an intense post-lunch session about leadership. Brown related the duo’s teachings to the mentality required to effectively guide any group, including golf course maintenance crews.
The first Future Leaders Academy concluded with an ask-anything, reveal-as-much-as-possible panel discussion. The second academy is set for Feb. 27 at Canterbury Golf Club in suburban Cleveland, where organizers will encounter at least a few attendees disgruntled with the hometown NFL team.
Delsandro, Corcoran and Bloom hope to expand the event to more markets. There’s always a demand for the authentic guidance coordinators need before becoming winning head coaches.
Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s publisher + editor-in-chief.
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