Whether it's the long hours or golfers' expecations, superintendents are dealing with a lot of stress. Stress, caused by dealing with golfers and working long hours, contributes to burnout among superintendents. Not every superintendent burns out, but they all have to deal with stress.
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A golf course superintendent manages and directs the maintenance, management and operation of golf courses. They conduct routine inspection of equipment and vehicles to ensure productivity and safety of the facility.
The national average salary for a Golf Course Superintendent is $98,268 per year in Canada.
$3,262 (CAD)/yr. The average golf course superintendent gross salary in Ontario, Canada is $92,399 or an equivalent hourly rate of $44. This is 1% higher (+$551) than the average golf course superintendent salary in Canada. In addition, they earn an average bonus of $3,262.
How much does a Golf Superintendent make in Florida? The average Golf Superintendent salary in Florida is $70,583 as of May 27, 2022, but the range typically falls between $59,171 and $84,991.
The average Groundskeeper salary in Augusta, GA is $36,939 as of May 27, 2022, but the range typically falls between $31,629 and $43,862. Salary ranges can vary widely depending on many important factors, including education, certifications, additional skills, the number of years you have spent in your profession.
Golf Course Superintendent Salary in Augusta, GAPercentileSalaryLast Updated50th Percentile Golf Course Superintendent Salary$69,600May 27, 202275th Percentile Golf Course Superintendent Salary$83,800May 27, 202290th Percentile Golf Course Superintendent Salary$96,728May 27, 20222 more rows
Big, bulky and bearded, Wilber, now 53 , is passionate about his profession. He calls himself the Turfgrass Zealot and has a stock speech about his successes.
Joseph LeFevre (pronounced la-fay) has a master’s in clinical psychology, and for the past 20 years he has practiced marriage and family therapy in San Jose. During that time, he has counseled hundreds on issues of stress, anxiety and depression, including some in the golf industry, and recently addressed a regional conference of superintendents on stress management.
He was convinced that he wasn’t worthy of anything—not acclaim, not friendship, not love. So in 2015, Wilber picked up a 90-day prescription, a beta-blocker for his heart rate, opened the bottle and swallowed its contents. “I was thinking it would shut off my heart,” Wilber says. “All it did was make me super sick.
Wilber is not the only one in the turfgrass business dealing with such an issue. Maintaining a golf course is a high-risk occupation and can put one’s physical well-being, personal relationships and mental health at risk.
At 24, he took a job in Northern California and instituted one of the first fully organic golf-course maintenance programs in the country at Lake Wildwood Country Club, a quiet second-home community at the base of Donner Pass. That was in 1990, half a decade before sustainable golf became an industry trend. As a leader of the movement, Wilber began ...
Jason Haines, 34, the superintendent at Sunshine Coast Golf & Country Club northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia, has felt the stress and anxiety of his profession for as long as he has been in the business. For him, it’s a particularly seasonal phenomenon. For six months of the year, the weather is cool and rainy, and stress is low. But every July and August, when the temperature and humidity rise to critical levels, placing his greens in jeopardy, his anxiety also rises.
The tattoo symbol was popularized by Amy Bleuel, who founded a suicide-prevention organization in Wisconsin and called it Project Semicolon because, as she told People magazine in 2015, “In literature, a semicolon is used when an author chooses not to end a sentence.”. Bleuel died in 2017 at 31, a suspected suicide.
Good help can be hard to find in any profession, and golf course superintendents are putting a premium on finding the manpower to ensure that they can provide golfers with top-notch playing conditions. After all, those efforts begin in the maintenance shop. With a crew of quality employees who are trainable, dedicated, and passionate, superintendents can mentor personnel who can adapt to new approaches and ever-changing industry technology.
To keep golf course maintenance operations running smoothly, employee retention is as important as recruitment. And little things can go a long way to let employees know that they’re appreciated.
Training for new employees at the 27-hole Sparrows Point Country Club in Baltimore, Md. begins before they ever set foot on the golf course. “Before employees start, they’re given a digital file with all of our standard operating procedures,” says Director of Grounds and Facilities Tyler Bloom.
The Echo Lake golf course maintenance department does not have a formal training program, but Carson says new employees must “learn the basics.” New crew members start out with tasks such as cutting greens and approaches with hand mowers, raking bunkers, and doing trim work. Once they have established those skills, Carson says, “We get them on machines. People that show aptitude and desire tend to grow.”
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States. In 2017, the foundation estimates 47,173 Americans died by suicide, and there were 1.4 million attempts, though the numbers might well be under-reported.
At 31, Kasey Kauff was head superintendent of the Highlands Course at Atlanta Athletic Club and prepared its state-of-the-art turfgrasses for the 2011 PGA Championship. The course was so flawless that Golf Digest proclaimed it the standard by which tournament golf in the Deep South would be judged.
Jason Haines, 34, the superintendent at Sunshine Coast Golf & Country Club northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia, has felt the stress and anxiety of his profession for as long as he has been in the business. For him, it’s a particularly seasonal phenomenon. For six months of the year, the weather is cool and rainy, and stress is low.
Miranda Robinson, 34, goes by the nickname of Moe, a nickname her two brothers gave her in her youth, and by the turf-related variation of Mow on social media. She has been in the course-maintenance business since 2005.
What these four people have in common, besides their dedication to the craft and their struggles with mental-health issues, is that they know one another. In the past two years, they have met and corresponded, summoning the courage to talk about intimate details and listening attentively to the others.
Joseph LeFevre (pronounced la-fay) has a master’s in clinical psychology, and for the past 20 years he has practiced marriage and family therapy in San Jose.
Performed in Northern climates with freezing winters, this practice, usually carried out in November, involves hooking up a giant air compressor to every sprinkler head on the course, and then running those sprinklers until they are blowing water for at least 60 seconds.
Overall, the job takes 3 to 4 days, a Massachusetts superintendent says. Late in the year, sprinkler heads can be hard to find because they’re overgrown with grass or covered with leaves. Sometimes, an early storm will bury the heads in snow, making the job nearly impossible.
7. Storm Clean-up. When Tropical Storm Hermine hit the Southeast in September 2016, it made a mess of golf courses. One Georgia course spent three weeks cleaning up — clearing debris, re-applying pine straw — only to see another storm, Hurricane Matthew, blow in on Oct. 4 and knock down 10,000 trees.
Frost de lays are a nuisance. But they’re not as big a headache as golfers complaining about frost delays. “There’s nothing I like less than standing in the pro shop explaining to irritated golfers why we can’t let them on the course,” an Ohio superintendent says.
Golf.com. A golf, food and travel writer , Josh Sens has been a GOLF Magazine contributor since 2004 and now contributes across all of GOLF’s platforms. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting.