Lucy Castaneda

Lucy Castaneda took a unique route to a career in the turf industry. She started working on the golf course at the University of New Mexico as an undergraduate while also competing for the Lobos. At the time, she had ambitions of playing professionally.

After two years of college golf, Castaneda turned professional and spent six years playing mini-tour golf before deciding the life of a professional golfer wasn’t for her. She returned to her alma mater where she’s been ever since.

Castaneda is the superintendent at the university’s North Course, a 9-hole public facility. All told, her career in turf spans 44 years.

Appearing on the Wonderful Women of Golf podcast with host Rick Woelfel, Castaneda noted how the turf industry has evolved in that time.

“[When my career began] it was more labor intense compared to now,” she says. “We have all the equipment we need to do pretty much everything, from aerification to topdressing to fertilizing. I remember back in the ’80s we didn’t have certain topdressers and we kept having to put out certain bags of product my boss wanted to use at the time. We had to do it all by hand. Now we don’t have to do that.

“Technology has made our jobs easier, but more demanding it seems like, because of people watching golf on TV.”

Castaneda believes televised golf coverage has heightened member/customer expectations.

“They [think], ‘If they can do it, why can’t this other golf course do it?’” she says. “It takes 160 people like they had [at the U.S. Women’s Open] to maintain that condition for those days,” she says. “Sometimes people will stop and talk to me and ask me questions and then I tell them what’s involved.

“Of course, money runs everything pretty much. It takes a lot to get it to look the way that it looks. It’s not just putting a little bit of water on it and fertilizing it.”

Castaneda oversees a crew of four, including herself. That circumstance requires setting priorities.

“I prioritize depending on if my whole staff is going to be here or not,” she says. “And it is difficult because there are lots of times I’m involved in the morning helping them set up the course, which pushes my things back, whether it’s fertilizing or spraying — those are the main things that I do. Spending four or five hours out on the course takes away from that.

“It’s a juggling act, but I just have to figure out and prioritize what’s going to come first.”

Castaneda was one of a group of 31 female volunteers at the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open at Erin Hills.

“That is probably one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life,” she says. “It was just such a different challenge in what had to be done before a certain time, which I don’t ever have to worry about. When you have to have five fairway mowers going on one side and five on another, and all these people raking traps and just seeing the whole operation, it’s mind blowing. What an experience to see what everybody can do when everybody’s working as a team and how much can be done.

“Toward the end of the week, I was exhausted because of the hours, but I would do it again in a second. It was a great experience.”

Castaneda notes that today’s superintendents find it much easier to access information than she did early in her career.

“They’re all learning and going to school, but the access to the internet is so much better than what I ever had,” she says. “It’s just so much easier to look something up than it was back then.

“Back then, it was more of making a phone call to somebody that had been in the business longer than myself and getting advice from them, or attending classes. Things are changing. And I’ve got to keep up with that change.”