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).”
“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.)
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.
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.