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The Golfdom Files Extended: Superintendent or greenkeeper – which?

By |  March 26, 2015 0 Comments

Golfdom’s March issue featured the topic of the various names for superintendents, which was touched on previously by our columnist Matt Neff.

This installment of the Golfdom Files, from our April 1969 issue, was written by Bill Smart and focuses on the history of the title greenkeeper changing to superintendent and the frustration of the majority that the former name still hung around.


1969aprcvA few years before World War II, the National Association of Greenkeepers changed its name to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, thus changing the title of everyone in the trade from greenkeeper to golf course superintendent. In spite of the passage of over 20 years, the old title still persists, to the delight of a few and the dismay of many.

Why has greenkeeper persisted instead of fading into the past along with the village blacksmith and the automobile crank? First and foremost, it continues because it is in both the written and the spoken language of the country. Any writer will admit that greenkeeper taps out on the keys more easily and naturally than golf course superintendent — especially when it’s coupled with an association’s name such as Golf Course Superintendents Association of America or even my affiliate, the Hudson Valley Golf Course Superintendents Association. By the same token, say the word greenkeeper in place of golf course superintendent and notice how lightly it trips off the tongue. Its use, therefore, is encouraged in everyday conversation because it’s just easier to say.

I have no doubt that if a nationwide poll of superintendents were taken today, 90 percent would be in favor of the title golf course superintendent, but for the wrong reason. As one widely-read golf writer put it, “Greenkeeper, they feel, connotes a rumpled little man in baggy overalls who darts about the fairways getting dirt under his fingernails.”

This description in fact did fit many of the pre World War II turfmen and even some of today’s. Perhaps in that 90 percent are those who feel that a more imposing title would un-rumple the man (past and present) from the baggy overalls to a gray flannel suit and manicured nails. Then there are those who have struggled and sweated through two to four years of turf school, most getting rumpled, baggy and dirty on seasonal course jobs and who will settle for nothing less than golf course superintendent as their title. One super I know discards, unopened, any mail addressed to him as greenkeeper.

The remaining 10 percent who like the old term have a broader view: Fundamentally the job has remained unchanged. The job functions are the same and have not disappeared as has the auto crank, or changed as the smithy was forced to do.

Greenkeeper is still a specific term for one trade (or profession if you wish) with no other value or use as a spoken word. The term superintendent, however, has been widely adopted in other fields, that today there are literally thousands of superintendents of one kind or another: building superintendents, school superintendents, park superintendents, construction superintendents and on and on.

The one factor that has changed the image of the superintendent, if not the title, has been the end product, the golf courses. Thanks to the golf boom, the golf course is the focal point of interest and admiration for millions of people. The course is where the supers’ collective recognition begins and ends.

The Westchester (N.Y.) course that offered $30,000 to one superintendent did not do so because he dressed as well as the members or because his title was golf course superintendent. They did so because he maintained his course in such a manner that both it and the man commanded the respect of his membership. I think we had something historically unique in the old term greenkeeper and in a sport where custom and tradition play such an important part, but it was dealt a long, low blow in 1938 and hooked into the rough.

A lady golfer wrote a poem in honor of my dad, entitled “Ode to the Keeper O’ the Green.” Somehow I feel that it never would have been written if she had had to write: “Ode to the Golf Course Superintendent.”

Photos: Golfdom Staff

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