2025 Super Social Media Awards: Joe Gulotti

All great travelers, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said, have seen more than they remember and remember more than they have seen. Joe Gulotti has seen lots and remembers more.

Approaching 30 years in the golf course maintenance industry, Gulotti is the superintendent of the Montchanin Course at DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, Delaware. He is also the host, the driver, the listener and the curator of The Talking Greenkeeper podcast. He finds great people with great stories and provides them with a platform and an audience. And, normally recording from the basement of his Killer Brick Rancher, he has lots of fun in the process.

Gulotti arrived relatively late to golf course maintenance. He played the game growing up in Delaware, but partied in high school, then traveled, then followed the Grateful Dead — a topic he discusses fairly regularly on the podcast, most notably with Rich Buckley, the director of the Rutgers University Plant Diagnostic Lab and a noted Deadhead, and Penn State associate professor Ben McGraw, who followed Phish on tour before his research career started — and landed in Austin, Texas.

“I couldn’t even find a job in golf when I moved to Austin,” he says. “I moved back and didn’t really have any idea what I wanted to do. I was waiting tables at a brewpub and a friend of mine came in, and he was telling me he was an assistant superintendent at Bulle Rock, and I had no idea that you could make a career out of this. I had no idea. Didn’t even think of the back of the house.”

He applied the next day at Newark Country Club.

“And that was that,” he says. “I was a greenkeeper.”

Twenty-seven years later, he still is. And the industry is better for it.

Gulotti will be honored alongside fellow award winners Wednesday, Feb. 5, at the Social Media Celebration at Aquatrols booth #4025 during the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show in San Diego. The ceremony begins at 2:30 p.m., PT. The event is open to all. Free drinks will be served before, during and after the ceremony.

How do you use social media? Do you search for guests on X, Bluesky or LinkedIn? Do people reach out to you?

It’s not as big as it used to be, to be honest. I want to steer clear of the turf stars of X. I just have more fun finding these hidden gems like a Sean Tonner, people who are telling interesting stories. Clay Payne is one I came across on social media who has a great story. If I find somebody on social media and I feel like they have a great story to tell, I’ll reach out to them. That’s kind of how I use social media.

People will reach out to me and tell me their story. If I see a post on X that I find interesting, or Bluesky or Instagram, yes. I’m not using it quite like I used to, but I do use it and I’m using it to promote the podcast.

#TurfTwitter specifically and Turf Social Media in general have changed quite a bit over the last decade. Do you still search out best practices?

I can’t say that I’ve seen anything really pertinent, best management practices, over the past couple of years. ‘Oh, wow, that’s pretty innovative.’ I’m not very good at social media. I’m pretty lazy about it. I wish I had the bandwidth to post more on Instagram. I’m just using it for entertainment purposes and to catch up on people and see what they’re doing. That’s basically what I’m using it for.

What does the future of Turf Social Media look like for you?

I think Twitter, or X, will become less of a platform. I think people are starting to use the platforms they prefer. I’m on Bluesky but I’m also on X. I haven’t left X because I find X entertaining. I’m on X more than I am on Bluesky. Instagram, I think, is probably going to be the one — Instagram and TikTok, just because of people’s attention spans. There’s so much information out there, with YouTube, ChatGPT, streaming services. There are so many things for our attention that want our hours and our eyes, and people just react better to a visual. I love to read, but most people don’t. People are into visuals. … I think Instagram is probably going to be the dominator in the turf business, but I think people will still use X and Bluesky and perhaps LinkedIn to get out their message. I think it’s going to be site-specific for what you like and how you like to digest that.

Matt LaWell is Golf Course Industry’s managing editor.