The Golfdom Files: Superintendent or greenkeeper — which?

In the January Golfdom, our resident assistant superintendent columnist Matt Neff wrote an impressive history on the various titles of superintendents. This was such a great topic that we had our crack team of historians (AKA associate editor Grant B. Gannon) delve into the archive to see if it had been brought up before. ¶ Turns out Bill Smart, then superintendent of Powelton CC in Newburgh, N.Y., and at the time president of the Hudson Valley GCSA, addressed the name in the April 1969 Golfdom. ¶ We couldn’t reprint the article in its entirety here, but the full version is available at golfdom.com/category/online-exclusive.

Cover: Golfdom

Although golf course superintendent is officially the title, the term greenkeeper still persists…

A 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.