Pioneer for all of us

“Who is Eb Steiniger?”

When retired superintendent Frank Dobie asked a room of superintendents if anyone recognized the name Eberhard Steiniger, only five people raised their hands. Mr. Eberhard “Eb” Rudolph Steinger, longtime superintendent at Pine Valley Golf Club, should not become a “forgotten man.”

Former USGA president Bill Campbell recognized that course superintendents have been the so-called “forgotten men” and wrote in a 1983 USGA Green Section Record article:

“What is more important than a friendly understanding by the golfers of the course superintendent’s role, their recognition of his various problems, and their appreciation of his contributions to their enjoyment of the game? ... I greatly respect the superintendent’s role, and I doubt that he gets the credit that he deserves. I want to do something about it.”

Steiniger started doing something about it 50 years earlier. Penn State recognizes Steiniger, Joe Valentine and Tom Mascaro as instrumental in pushing for a formal college curriculum, a distinct body of knowledge and a degree granting program that, through their diligence, convinced Penn State professor H. Burton Musser to introduce the nation’s first two-year degree granting turfgrass management program.

Steiniger had a special bond with Penn State, but he would guest lecture at other institutions. One of his appearances at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass deeply impacted eventual legendary superintendent Dick Bator. Steiniger’s traveling carousel slideshow influenced Bator’s decision to aspire to become the superintendent at Pine Valley.

Another marquee superintendent who recalls the day Steiniger visited his class is Aronimink Golf Club’s John Gosselin, who graduated from Penn State in 1987 and was the 2025 recipient of the Philadelphia Association of Golf Course Superintendents’ Eb Steiniger Award.

“[Eb] showed a wonderful slide show of his years at PV,” Gosselin says in a 2009 Golf Club Atlas thread. “The one thing that stands out to me still to this day (23 years later) is the number of trees and other shrub type plant material he and Mr. Brown planted. I remember him describing the isolation they created from one hole to another. They were true pioneers that may have started this trend in screening each hole.” Mr. Brown is John Arthur Brown, the president of Pine Valley for almost 50 years.

Steiniger followed his boss, Norman Mattice, from Lake- ville Golf Club to Pine Valley around 1927-28. In 1931, according to James Finegan’s “Pine Valley Golf Club: A Unique Haven of the Game,” Brown told Steiniger: “[I] just fired Mattice. ... If you think you can handle the job, it’s yours. If not, you’re fired too.” Steiniger’s close friend Mascaro told us in a 1983 Golf Course Management article that Brown made a sound decision when he said, “Eb, you are responsible for everything outside. ... Don’t bother me with details.” Steiniger described the special bond: “It’s a very profitable arrangement,” he told Gerry Finn for a May 1971 story in the GCSA of New England’s The Newsletter. “There is no bother about transition. I know I’m going to have the same boss every year. Naturally, over 40 seasons together, we understand each other.”

Steiniger attended his first Turfgrass Conference for Greenkeepers at Penn State in 1928 and the first time he was a program speaker was in 1933. In 1940, the presentation was reprinted in the GCSAA’s The Reporter, where we learn Steiniger made sure to visit his crew three or four times a day because the superintendent is responsible if “anything goes wrong on the golf course.” Those lucky enough to attend the 1975 Massachusetts Turf and Lawn Grass Council Conference could catch Steiniger’s 1:45 p.m. lecture on Pine Valley’s automatic watering systems.

Steiniger is credited with discovering C-7 strain. The September 1968 USGA Green Section Record includes The Story of Cohansey, an article written by Steiniger. The variety was first seen in 1933, with Steiniger closely monitoring its behavior. In 1935, one square foot was planted in Pine Valley’s nursery along with select other strains. “Its fine texture and upright growth made it a fine putting green turf, and its light green color was pleasing to see,” Steiniger declared.

In 1932, Pine Valley was selected as a regional turf laboratory site by the USGA Green Section, which resulted in frequent visits by Green Section agronomists like Dr. Fred Grau and Al Radko, who officially came to evaluate the growth of different grasses. But unofficially, I suspect, they came to enjoy Steiniger’s humor and wit. They maybe even received a chance to play the course with Steiniger.

In a 2019 Golf Magazine contribution, golf course architect Tom Doak credited Steiniger, in part, for making Pine Valley one of a kind. “Pete Dye asked me cryptically which course that I had seen had the most turf plots for testing the viability of different grasses,” Doak wrote in the article. “When I answered that it was Pine Valley, he nodded and told me to think about how much the contrast and texture of those different grasses added to the unique look of the course.”

By 1940, Steiniger was well regarded within the turfgrass community. He was part of turf history when he participated in the first Eastern Athletic Field Tour in July 1951. In addition to Steiniger, other luminaries in attendance were Rutgers’ Ralph Engel, Penn State’s Musser, Wisconsin’s O.J. Noer, the USGA’s Bill Bengeyfield, and Charles Hallowell, and Mascaro of West Point Products. Mascaro invented the aerifier (1946) and verticutter (1952), two products that revolutionized golf course management.

Tom Watschke, at the 1994 dedication of the Penn State Mascaro/Steiniger Turfgrass Equipment Museum, observed that Steiniger and Mascaro were “the perfect marriage of innovator and inventor. ... Tom would invent and prototype pieces of equipment at the urging of Eb, and they’d try them out at Pine Valley.” According to Steiniger, “Tom was always hanging around our place, bringing some new equipment to try out at Pine Valley. … We got the whole place aerified, and it didn’t cost me a thing because we didn’t buy his machine! Tom was very generous with us.”

Sherwood Moore’s career spanned from 1939 to 1985, Steiniger’s from 1928 to 1983. Moore is the beneficiary of Steiniger’s push for professionalization through education being a graduate of the Stockbridge School. Moore represents the bridge linking the Steiniger/Valentine Era and the modern “professional” superintendent. Moore served on the GCSAA board many years before becoming its president in 1962 and also was president of both the New Jersey GCSA (1953-54) and the Metropolitan GCSA (1965-66).

In 2000, Golf Course News reported that Moore was selected as the century’s top superintendent among active/retired superintendents, beating the second-place finisher Steiniger. Moore recalls a club member asking, “Mr. Moore, just when did this position of yours become a profession?” Whether Moore was insulted or not we don’t know, but he remarked in a GCSAA president’s memo: “Here was a member who probably a few years ago never even knew a golf course superintendent existed, and now he realized that our work was of a professional nature.”

Dobie, a 1960 Penn State graduate, is another superintendent who fits the modern professional. In 1965, Dobie, who counts Steiniger as one of his mentors, wrote in the The Golf Course Reporter, “I think the greatest reason for our work reaching professional status has been the golf course superintendent himself. ... The modern superintendent is better educated, more widely trained, more flexible and more polished.”

The Philadelphia Association Golf Course Superintendents, which celebrated its 100th anniversary earlier this year, established the Eb Steiniger Award in 1990. Joe Roynan, the 2006 recipient, said: “I knew Eberhard Steiniger personally. He was just the greatest guy and such a gentleman. ... He was always willing to help no matter who you were. He was the superintendent at Pine Valley, one of the greatest courses in the country. He really did not have to talk to anyone.”

A young Steiniger once found himself in the company of GCSAA board members, including Col. John Morley. As Steiniger told the story in a 1995 Golf Course Management interview: “So, there I was, sitting with all the big shots — and I wasn’t even a member yet. Morley and I were talking about Pine Valley. I remember telling him I had a terrible problem with clover in the greens, and I asked him what he would do. Morley just cleared his throat and said, ‘If it’s too bad, we’d just sod it.’ I thought, ‘That’s an idea — if you have a nursery.’”

Morley to Steiniger to Moore to Dobie …

Steiniger died on April 13, 2002, at age 96. In 1993, Steiniger said: “I spent over 60 years in turf management and field research, and I enjoyed every minute and every year of it.” Steiniger considered the nicest compliment he received — a testament to his lifelong devotion to maintaining the “Valley” — what one UK golfer who played all over the world and traveled every year to Pine Valley said to him after a round: “‘Mr. Steiniger, I’d like to pay you a compliment.’ And he said three words: ‘This is it.’”

Steiniger and John Mascaro, the president of Turf-Tec at the time, visited Pine Valley in September 2000. Steiniger was 94 and almost totally blind, yet he did not need to see the landscape he painted to know instinctively his way around.

“Eb ... was able to guide me around the golf course like he had 20/20 vision,” Mascaro said in the November 2000 edition of Turf-Tec Digest. “In fact, on one occasion, I thought I was totally lost and Eb kept telling me to drive straight ahead and turn at the next tree. I had to remind him that he could not see. Just then, there was the tree, and I never corrected him again.”

When I found a PAGCS interview of Steiniger online, I was excited to hear what he had to say in his thick German accent. That day Eb Steiniger was real. The thing that struck me the most was that Steiniger was a golfer. He played with other superintendents in the Philadelphia area like Tom Dougherty of Springhaven and Joe Flynn of Rolling Green Golf Club.

Brown wrote in “Short History of Pine Valley,” first published in 1963: “We believe Eb to be one of the best greenskeepers in America.” By the end of the 1960s, the GCSAA decided “greenkeeper” did not reflect the duties and responsibilities of the modern superintendent, though Steiniger preferred the term.

Finally, we get a glimpse of Steiniger’s humor and sharp wit when Clay Loyd once asked him for a 1995 Golf Course Management article how he handled member complaints. “Well, for instance, there was the time Dr. Weaver missed his putt on the fourth hole. ‘Hey, Eb,’ he said. ‘Those brown spots in the fairways out there, ... are you doing anything about them?’ ‘Doc,’ Eb replied, ‘Why don’t you look at the flowers once in a while? The laurel is in bloom right now.’”

Touché!

Brian J. Rizzo, PhD, a retired NYPD sergeant and Westfield State University professor of criminal justice, is a member of the Olde Kinderhook Golf Club in Valatie, New York, where he prefers walking to riding. He collects golf memorabilia and books, and enjoys deep dives into golf history. His fascination with Steiniger began in 2024 when he came across a letter written by John Arthur Brown, then president of Pine Valley Golf Club, complimenting Eb and his crew for a job well done in preparing the course for the 1936 Walker Cup match. This is his first Turfheads Take Over contribution.