The year was 1925. America was a different place a century ago. The country was just seven years removed from World War I. The 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, had been ratified just five years earlier.
And greenkeepers, as they were known then, toiled in anonymity. But change permeated the air.
On Sept. 14, 1925, a group of 28 greenkeepers and four club officers gathered for dinner and a meeting at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, just north of downtown Philadelphia, and formed the Greenkeepers Association of the Philadelphia Greens Section.
It wasn’t the first association of its kind. Superintendents in the Cleveland District of the USGA Greens Section founded a regional association in 1923 and a group of New England-based turf professionals did the same the following year. But the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America wouldn’t be founded until 1926 and the Philadelphia Association of Golf Course Superintendents (the present name was adopted in March 1926) became a key player in the turf industry as we know it.
Today, the association boasts a membership of 480, including superintendents, assistants and others with ties to the industry.
Greg D’Antonio, the head superintendent at Concord Country Club in West Chester is the organization’s current president. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State and a master’s degree from West Chester University. He’s been at Concord since December 2010.
D’Antonio credits those who worked to get the regional and national associations off the ground a century ago.
“These organizations helped elevate our place at the table, so to speak, with the golf professionals and board members,” he says, “and helped enhance the level of respect that we get.”
That inaugural meeting set the tone for what the PAGCS was to become. The evening was highlighted by the election of a slate of officers: Thomas Young of Whitemarsh Valley was named the group’s first president on the basis of being the most senior member in terms of years of service. Joe Valentine of Merion Golf Club was selected as vice president and Mrs. Isabel K. Eddy was selected as the secretary/treasurer.
Housekeeping chores included establishing annual dues of $5 for head superintendents with the fiscal year to begin Sept. 1. Assistant superintendents were eligible for membership at no charge.
Perhaps the most significant remarks of the evening were uttered by H.K. Read, the parliamentarian who offered the following words: “The day of secrecy is passed.” They became words to live by for an organization that supports its members and — arguably more important — encourages its members to support each other. It’s that philosophy that makes the turf industry unique.
While golf facilities are theoretically competing for members and customers, superintendents will universally go the extra mile to assist a colleague in need, whether that involves offering suggestions on how best to confront a pest or disease problem, to thoughts about a new fungicide, to providing support when their colleague is hosting a major event.
On a certain level, it’s akin to the chefs at competing restaurants exchanging recipes or the coaching staffs of the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys swapping playbooks. But that We’re all in this together mindset is one of the industry’s core values.
Joe Owsik has been the head superintendent at Hershey’s Mill Golf Club in West Chester since 2020. A 45-year turf industry veteran, he was an avid golfer growing up and took a job at Merion because it provided opportunities to practice and play.
Owsik completed the two-year program at Penn State. He served as PAGCS president in 1998-99.
“The origins of [the PAGCS] are education and the sharing of ideas,” he says. “Everybody’s dealing with the same problems and trying to fix them.” OTHER ATTENDEES AT that initial meeting included Valentine’s brother Robert, who was the greenkeeper at St. David’s Golf Club in the Philadelphia suburb of Wayne, and Howard Toomey, who, with William Flynn, would form perhaps the greatest architectural tandem in history. Toomey was formally invited to join the association within a month.
Flynn is not listed among the attendees of that first meeting but he had a significant impact on the evolution of the profession in his adopted hometown well before the association was launched.
A Massachusetts native, Flynn came to Philadelphia to work as a greenkeeper at Merion’s original site before Hugh Wilson named him the construction supervisor at Merion’s East Course. Once the course opened for play in September 1912, Flynn became a greenkeeper there.
He had an abiding love for turf and, in addition to writing frequently about the subject, was a lecturer at Penn State. Among the young men Flynn helped get started in the profession was Joe Valentine, who had also worked at Merion’s original site.
Valentine was appointed greenkeeper at Merion in 1918 and would go on to serve the club and the turf industry for 54 years. At one point in the 1930s, he discovered a strain of turfgrass adjacent to the East Course’s 17th tee that became known as Merion bluegrass.
Valentine’s impact was felt throughout the industry and continues today, nearly six decades after his death in 1966. He played a key role in the launch of Penn State’s Turfgrass Management Program in 1929. A year later, he helped form the Turfgrass Research Advisory Council and chaired that group until 1955. In 1932, Valentine and others convinced the Pennsylvania state legislature to pass legislation that allocated $10,000 for Penn State to conduct turfgrass research. Today, the university’s Joseph E. Valentine Turfgrass Research Center bears his name.
Paul B. Latshaw, now in his second tour of duty in the top spot at Merion, cites Valentine’s impact on the industry.
“The [Valentine Turfgrass Research Center] was all his doing,” Latshaw says. “Back then, there were schools but there wasn’t really research for these sorts of things. All these turf programs, throughout the United States and the world, they started with Joe Valentine and what he did for the industry.”
From its earliest days, the PAGCS has been about informing and educating its members. Its regular monthly meetings, which customarily were held at area golf and country clubs, featured presentations on subjects unique to the industry. The topics might include brown patch control — apparently a common problem in in the 1920s — grub control (carbon disulfide was the recommended treatment), how often and how high to cut greens, and, deep in the Blue Law era, whether greens should be cut on Sundays.
Almost immediately after the United States entered World War II, the PAGCS offered guidelines to superintendents prioritizing their maintenance efforts. They included:
- Advising superintendents to be careful filling in ponds and minimize the risks associated with the task
- Clearing leaves and branches out of wooded areas and burning them
- Cutting the rough as short as possible
- Stop maintaining bunkers (with the exception of washout areas) and turn the responsibility for removing footprints, etc. over to the golfers themselves
All this left the association’s membership better informed.
Today, much of the information that early on was dispensed at association meetings or in a newsletter is now available through other means. JERROD GOLDEN IS the director of grounds and water quality at Hershey’s Mill Golf Club. The Penn State graduate been in the industry for 50 years and at Hershey’s Mill for 46. He served as president of the PAGCS in 1990-91.
“When I got out of Penn State, there was this transition from the old school, superintendents who just learned by doing,” he says. “They came up in the era before we had college training. I was in the wave of guys replacing non-college-educated guys. Now every course has at least one and maybe two college-trained assistants. That’s changed dramatically.”
Golden adds that formal education is not as critical as it was early in his career. The internet provides increased access to information.
“When I first got in the association, we had a formal meeting with a speaker every meeting. It’s not quite as necessary anymore because we can get that information in other ways. Through extensions, through university publications, through all sorts of other venues. You couldn’t have gotten that information that way back then.”
Owsik cites the impact of institutions like Penn State and Rutgers University on the turf industry. “The research that’s been done at Penn State and Rutgers over the years,” he says, “where they’ve looked at the problems people have on their golf courses, they’ve simulated the same problem in their research and done all their trials with pesticides and fertility.”
Owsik says this kind of research has led to finding solutions for longstanding problems. “Anthracnose used to be a big problem on putting greens. Rutgers did a study with just fertility. We were just starving the grass for green speeds. But in reality, it was creating the anthracnose problem.”
Owsik notes that today’s superintendents are working with equipment that is far superior to those of their predecessors.
“The technology is obviously coming on really strong now,” he says. “You have GPS-equipped equipment. The chemical companies have continued to develop products that solved issues that were a problem 30 to 40 years ago.”
Owsik recalls working the 1981 U.S. Open at Merion under then-superintendent Richie Valentine.
“We were running ground-driven reels on the fairways,” he says. “The manufacturers loaned us hydraulically driven reels, which were just coming about at that time. We were literally running pull-behind cutting units on fairways. Now you’re running green-spray stuff that is just amazing.”
Golden notes that the start of his career coincided with a period when equipment manufacturers were earmarking more dollars for research.
“You had three different companies vying for your attention,” he recalls. “They all were throwing money into engineering. Equipment was improving dramatically. And then the chemical development! What we’ve seen in chemical and breeding programs across the country, it’s night and day. It’s really like going from a Model T to a modern car. That’s how far we’ve come.”
Advances in equipment technology and the development of new plant protectants have led to advances in turf science.
“Because of grass selection and grass breeding, Penn State and all these universities have gotten so much better,” Latshaw says. “That’s because of the USGA and all the funding they do of research and plant development. They’re more disease-resistant, they’re more drought-tolerant, they’re finer texture.”
Latshaw points out that advances in turf science are ongoing.
“We rebuilt the whole East Course in 2018,” he says. “But if we were to do it tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t use the same grasses I did back then. Back then they were the latest and greatest, but there is so much development that has come out since then.”
Those advances in turf science have led to improved conditions at courses of all levels, from daily-fee facilities to private clubs. And golfers expect quality conditions wherever they choose to tee it up.
D’Antonio says that’s due to turfgrass breeding.
“The newer grasses can take more stress and be mowed lower,” he says. “You think about where we mow greens now and it’s under a tenth of an inch compared to an eighth or 3/16ths 20 years ago. That’s because of the new grasses that have come out, as well as the technology of mowers. The technology with irrigation. The technology of moisture management. Now you’re seeing GPS sprayers that are 99.9 percent precise and take operator error out of things.
“All those things work together, but I think most important has been the development of the new grasses as well as the research at the university level and the USGA level: What you need to do to create those conditions? Whether it’s tree removal, whether it’s drainage, whether it’s air flow — all those things work together.”
It’s no secret that a sizeable number of golfers, particularly private club members, regard the speed of their club’s greens as a badge of honor.
“Ten on the Stimpmeter used to be acceptable,” D’Antonio said. “Now, it’s considered a slow speed, I think, at most private clubs.” THE PAGCS MARKED its 100th anniversary with a celebratory dinner on Oct. 31 at Union League Liberty Hill, located just a short drive from Whitemarsh Valley, where the association was born.
The environment in which turf professionals ply their trade has evolved considerably since that first gathering, but some core principles still apply.
“Regardless of technology and evolution, there’s always going to be four principles regardless of what you’re doing,” Latshaw says. “Air, light, soil, water. It all starts with that.”
The PAGCS has kept up with the changing times while continuing to fulfill its core mission, supporting its members and encouraging men and women who choose to enter a demanding but rewarding profession.
Golden derives considerable satisfaction from seeing newcomers enter the profession.
“I don’t think there’s anything better than that,” he says. “I think the association plays a strong role in getting people together and fostering that feeling of kinship and professionalism. I’ve had lots of guys come through here as interns or just as turf students, and to see them move on in their careers is fantastic.”
Charlie Miller has worked his entire 35-year turf career at The Springhaven Club in Wallingford and has regularly turned to the PAGCS.
“It gives you the opportunity to meet people that maybe are a little farther away and then create that network,” he says. “Then you’ve always got somebody you can call if you have a question.
“It’s the networking experience, it’s the contacts, it’s the people. Our association provides a really good platform for people to connect, to network, and become allies for one another.”
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