Mangum and Esoda inducted into Georgia superintendents HOF

Ken Mangum and Mark Esoda were inducted to Georgia Golf Course Superintendents Association Hall of Fame.

Two prominent figures in the golf course superintendent profession are the latest entrants to the Georgia Golf Course Superintendents Association Hall of Fame. Ken Mangum, CGCS from Atlanta Athletic Club and Mark Esoda, CGCS from Atlanta Country Club, were inducted during the Georgia GCSA’s annual awards banquet at Atlanta Athletic Club this month.

In 25 years at the club Mangum has prepared the golf course for two PGA Championships, the U.S. Women’s Open championship and the U.S. Junior Championship. Next year, the club hosts the U.S. Amateur Championship. He was president of the Georgia GCSA in 1997-’98 and won the association’s Superintendent of the Year award in 2003.

Mangum, 60, also served as a director on the board of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America from 1996-2001 and received GCSAA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award, early this year. He also received the Ike Grainger Award this year for extended service to the USGA Green Section Committee which he has served since 1988.

Esoda, 54, boasts a similarly glowing resume built mostly over his 24 years at Atlanta Country Club just 20 miles from Mangum’s office. He too led the Georgia GCSA as president, in 1995-’96 and was Superintendent of the Year in 2001. He won the association’s Distinguished Service Award in 2008 on the back of a landmark campaign to maintain golf’s access to water during drought.

GCSAA honored Esoda with its Distinguished Service Award in 2009. In 2004 he received an Excellence in Government Relations Award and Presidential Commendation from GCSAA. A year later he occupied rare territory as a superintendent receiving the Distinguished Service Award from the PGA Georgia Section. In 2011, he became only the second superintendent inducted to the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame.

“Through the efforts of people like Ken Mangum and Mark Esoda golf course superintendents are better understood, respected and appreciated than ever before,” says Georgia GCSA president, Mike Brown, from The Standard Club. “They have both been in the business a very long time and apart from everything else they really are experts in maintaining their golf courses. But their contributions far exceed that work and every golf course superintendent and indeed the industry as a whole should be grateful for that.

The Georgia GCSA Hall of Fame was established in 2011 and now has eight members. Previous inductees were the late Harold Baldwin, Palmer Maples, Jr. CGCS, Charles Underwood, Bill Womac, CGCS, Buzz Howell and Don Branch.