The Rocky Mountain Golf Course Superintendents Association Turns 75

By Jon Rizzi

<<<image 1>>>Dodrans centennial isn’t the scientific name for a new strain of drought-resistant turfgrass. If it were, just about every member of the Rocky Mountain Golf Course Superintendents Association (RMGCSA) could readily recite everything from its soil requirements to its germination and growth rate to its playability characteristics—and provide a tidy cost-benefit analysis.

Dodranscentennial is Latin for “75th anniversary,” which the RMGCSA is celebrating this year. What started in 1936 as the 10-member Rocky Mountain Greenkeepers Association now counts 11 members on its board of directors alone. As study after study reveals that course conditions consistently rank at the top priority for golfers, it’s gratifying to know that the 650-member RMGCSA consistently enjoys the reputation as one the strongest of the 100 chapters of the Lawrence, Kan.-based Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA).

“More than seventy-five percent of eligible Colorado superintendents become members and stay members, compared to the national average of 50 percent for other chapters—and its membership is active, ” says Jeff Bollig, the GCSAA’s director of marketing and communications.
“It’s a very forward-thinking group as a whole—not only on a local and state level but on a national level as well. It’s not easy in a huge state like Colorado, but this group makes an effort to attend meetings and get really involved in the business and operation of the golf course.”

That level of involvement on the part of the superintendent has certainly changed since 1936 when Jim Haines of the Denver Country Club formed a group “to unite, educate and enhance the prestige” of area greenkeepers— the majority of whom were retired farmers who’d moved into golf maintenance positions. “They were good old boys who had learned the business along the way,” recalls Stan Metsker, who was born the same year the RMGCSA was founded and enjoys the unofficial title of “dean of Colorado Golf Course Superintendents. ”

Metsker almost singlehandedly overhauled the superintendent profession in Colorado and the country. He majored in agriculture at Colorado A&M (as Colorado State was then known)—site of the first Rocky Mountain Regional Turfgrass conference in 1954—and was hired in 1958 as foreman at Cherry Hills Country Club by fellow CA&T alumnus, superintendent Ted Rupel. “Ted and I were probably the first college-educated superintendents in the state, and a lot of the others weren’t too appreciative,” he says.

“Back then, the association meetings were held at a watering hole somewhere.” Rupel and Metsker—who produced what USGA Executive Director Joe Dey called in 1960, “the best conditioned course ever to host a U.S. Open”—sought to bring more professionalism into the ranks. Metsker would move on to superintendent jobs at Lakewood Country Club and the soon-to-be-completed Boulder Country Club, where he began a push for a rigorous certification program for all RMGCSA members. The GCSAA would approve that program nationally in 1970—two years after the RMGCSA had adopted it.

For golf course superintendents, the initials CGCS (Certified Golf Course Superintendent) connote the same level of expertise and competence as PGA does for golf professionals.

“Certification took the golf course superintendent from an occupation to a profession in the eyes of the public and the industry,” says Metsker. The elevation of the superintendent to a professional level became increasingly important during the 1980s and 1990s, as advances in irrigation and drainage technology, maintenance equipment and turf grass strains demanded higher levels of expertise. Add in the members’ expectations that their course should look and play as impeccably as Augusta National and the PGA Tour sites seen on television, and you have a professional who sits squarely in the crosshairs.

“When you lower cuts on a green from 3/16 of an inch to 1/8 of an inch, you raise the bar on maintenance. It requires more equipment and more money,” says Metsker. “And with the economy the way it is today, I’m glad I retired when I did (in 2001).” <<<Image 2>>>

“More than ever, being a superintendent is a balance between what’s good agronomics and good economics,” says Eric Foerster, an RMGCSA board member who serves as both operations manager and golf course superintendent at Ironbridge Golf Club, the Glenwood Springs property owned by the embattled Lehman Brothers. “We’re not just mower jockeys. Supers have to have business skills. Ownership demands it.”

“The superintendent has over the last forty years gone from the guy down at the barn to an equal in the boardroom as far as the club is concerned,” says Dennis Lyon, a Metsker protégé who became the longtime manager of golf for the City of Aurora and the first GCSAA president to come from a municipal course. Lyon, along with Metsker, Jim Haines and former Cherry Hills superintendent Henry Hughes (who went on to become a golf course architect, designing Columbine Country Club and more than 40 other courses) are the only superintendents in the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame.

“We’re by nature behind-the-scenes guys,” says Foerster. “We’re out there before anyone else, getting the course ready. We don’t necessarily want to be seen, interrupting play.”

However, he adds, “A lot of people think a superintendent is the guy in charge of g rass. That’s not true of today’s superintendent. He has to understand many facets of the operation. You have to know about plumbing and electrical, human resources, put on your accountant’s hat when you meet with the board, and your planner’s hat for long-range planning meetings.”

Given these protean responsibilities, Foerster says it doesn’t surprise him at all that fellow RMGCSA member Caleb Kerhwald is now both the superintendent and general manager at the Raven at Three Peaks, or that Larry Burks is the GM at Pole Creek Golf Club. “We have guys like Mark Krick (the Homestead at Fox Hollow) and Joe McCleary (formerly of Saddle Rock) with MBAs,” he says. “Mike Burke at Cherry Hills and Freddy Dickman at The Broadmoor regularly prepare courses for USGA championships. And Derf Soller, who used to be at Breckenridge Golf Club, now works as a chief agronomist for the USGA Green Section.”

The RMGCSA’s membership roll also includes golf course architects Jim Engh, Kevin Atkinson, Mark Miller, and Rick and Dick Phelps; representatives from dozens of local and national companies such as LL Johnson, Arkansas Valley Seed, Golf Enviro Systems, Simplot, John Deere, Rain Bird and Mile High Turfgrass; and Colorado State University professors Tony Koski and Yaling Qian.

“To tap this broad knowledge base is one of the most beneficial things about the chapter,” says RMGCSA President Dan Hawkins, the director of agronomy and facility operations at The Club at Flying Horse in Colorado Springs. “The greatest benefit to this organization is that the guys are like family.

You never leave a monthly meeting without someone asking you to give them a call.” Further enhancing the organization is its relationship with Colorado State’s Turf Program, part of the university’s Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, which provides valuable resources, research and future superintendents. The RMGCSSA does what it can “to help them financially.

They’re always compe ting against Penn State and the other land grant schools,” says Hawkins, citing scholarship donations given through the Golf Foundation of Colorado, the RMGSA’s charitable arm, which rewards students planning careers in golf course or turfgrass management, turfgrass science or other golf industry-related careers. (According to the bylaws, students can either be a Colorado resident attending an out-of-state accredited institution of higher learning or an out-of-state resident attending an accredited institution of higher learning in Colorado.)

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The RMGCSA’s dedication to environmental initiatives dates back to the 1980s, when golf courses found themselves targeted because of their use of chemicals and water and their impact on flora and fauna habitats. “The thing is, we’re environmentalists by nature,” says Dennis Lyon. “It’s taken 20 to 30 years to get that message to the mainstream. As a profession, we’re creating a habitat for wildlife.”

As evidence, Colorado features one of the highest percentages of Audubon International Certified Sanctuaries in the country, with two municipal courses—Haymaker in Steamboat Springs and The Heritage at Westmoor in Westminster—declared “Signature Sanctuaries.”
Moreover, Matt Rusch at Applewood Golf Course in Golden uses no pesticides or herbicides and applies only organic fertilizers to his course. “I think organic golf is something we’re going towards; it’s here to stay,” says Foerster, who mixes nutrient-dense seaweed into his fertilizer to reduce water consumption.

Showing its forward-thinking commitment to environmental issues, the RMGCSA is collaborating closely with CSU professors on their groundbreaking Carbon Sequestration Study, which will offer a better understanding of the roles carbon sequestration and carbon emissions play in the management of golf courses and what impact golf course operations have on the environment. The result will be a more efficient use of resources and environmental performance. “Most of us are doing that anyway,” says Joe McCleary, an environmental proponent who until this year was superintendent at Saddle Rock Golf Course.

“I’m confident in saying that just one big box store in the Aurora Mall leaves a bigger carbon footprint than Saddle Rock.” McCleary, who earned multiple national awards for his environmental stewardship, left his fingerprints all over the RMGCSA, with one of his most significant contributions being the lead role he played in the exhaustive, cutting- edge “Golf In Colorado: An Independent Study of the Economic Impact and Environmental Aspects of Golf In Colorado.” Among other findings, the 2002 study—commissioned by the RMGCSA and the Colorado Golf Association, Colorado Women’s Golf Association, Colorado Section of the PGA and the Colorado chapters of the Club Managers of America and Golf Course Owners Association— determined the state’s golf industry was responsible for approximately $1.2 billion in annual revenue and accounted for just under one-third of one percent of the state’s water consumption.

The study also showed golf created $15,730 in revenue per acre of land and $11,667 per acre-foot of water; only 54.2 percent of the state’s golf course acreage was irrigated; and 33 percent provided wildlife habitat. The study earned the RMGCSA the 2006 GCSAA President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship and provided the blueprint for similar studies by other chapters.

<<<image 4>>>Equally significant recognition for the chapter came the following year when the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame named Vail Golf Club Superintendent Stephen Sarro its Golf Person of the Year. In the spring following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Sarro led a group of 30 superintendents 1500 miles to New Orleans to help four golf courses (TPC of Louisiana, English Turn, Audubon and Brechtel) recover. “What is nice about this industry is we are used to helping each other out,” Sarro said at the time. “We are all friends and want to help. Our peers have faced significant challenges.

With labor in short supply, we saw this as a means to provide expertise in helping golf courses get back open.” “They are one of the most sharing, giving, passionate-about-what-theydo group I’ve been around,” says Gary Leeper, the CEO of Interactive agement Inc., who serves as Executive Director of the RMGCSA and two other nonprofits. “They communicate so well. If one of them has a problem, he’ll call his network. They have what it takes to get things done.”

As Bookcliff Country Club’s John Hoofnagle, the chapter’s unofficial historian, summarizes: “There have been incredible changes over my 41 years in this profession, but the heart and soul of superintending hasn’t changed. Everyone wants to help their peers. Guys at the big private courses talk to the guys at little municipal courses. We get so humbled by the weather, it’s tough to have a big ego.”

Jon Rizzi is the editor of Colorado AvidGolfer.