2013 Graffis Businessperson of the Year: Wayne Kappelman

By Golfdom Staff| February 13, 2013

You’ve read all about the case. You know about the red-legged frog and the California garter snake. Now meet the man behind Sharp Park Golf Course, superintendent Wayne Kappelman, our winner of the 2013 Herb Graffis Businessperson of the Year Award.

There are frost delays, and there are fog delays. But frog delays?

San Francisco’s Sharp Park Golf Course has no problem delaying golfers from teeing off on the back nine in the early morning hours. That’s because the red-legged frog is a threatened species, and that’s the time they sometimes emerge from the lagoon on No. 12, especially in the winter months.   Sharp Park Golf Course is familiar to many in the golf industry, but not for the right reasons. The focus hasn’t been on the course being an Alistair MacKenzie design, or one of San Francisco’s affordable municipal courses, host to 50,000 rounds a year. Most disappointing, the Herculean efforts of the crew to keep the course harmonious with nature is rarely brought up.

No, the headlines that Sharp Park makes regard the lawsuit the course has been embroiled in for the last several years. Misguided environmentalists — who won’t get much space here — have tried shutting the course down because the endangered California garter snake and the threatened red-legged frog both live on the course. But on Dec. 6th, 2012, Judge Susan Illston dismissed “Wild Equity Institute, et al v. the City and County of San Francisco, et al” after reviewing a Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement issued by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.   Though the environmental groups have filed an appeal, it seems that this match play has at least gone dormie in favor of Sharp Park Golf Course. The battle has been fought valiantly in court rooms by such groups as the San Francisco Public Golf Alliance. But there is a front line to this battle, and the man leading that charge is the man on the ground, Wayne Kappelman, superintendent at Sharp Park Golf Course, winner of Golfdom’s Herb Graffis Businessperson of the Year award.