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I started covering the golf industry on May 5, 2014. I thought a few things would have been more widely accepted, developed or embraced by May 5, 2025.
Yikes, I was wrong!
Let’s review some internal flubs.
A magic potion will replace core aerifying
I’m brainstorming this column after hitting a few lunchtime putts at a local golf course. I have little idea if this will be my year on the greens. Recovering aeration holes misdirected what seemed like two dozen (out of 119) purely struck, uphill 6-footers. Remember: It’s never the operator’s fault in this game! But I do know the busy course will have strong, resilient greens when we reach the peak golf season.
Golfers still patiently wait for scientists to identify and commercialize a proven method to limit thatch and reduce compaction without the mess, expense and hassle of pulling cores. Not every complexity is solvable via bottle … yet.
The industry will offer more competitive pay
I didn’t think I’d be seeing 2025 job postings for demanding assistant superintendent positions paying under $45,000, full-time positions requiring degrees at “elite” clubs in high cost-of-living regions paying $18 per hour and seasonal workers making a state’s minimum wage. I underestimated how owners, boards and management companies leverage “passion discounts” to their fiscal advantages.
Thousands of facilities generated abundant revenue thanks to record rounds played from 2021 through 2024. Money exists in industry coffers to pay dedicated, full-time workers wages comparable to other industries.
The 2023 GCSAA Compensation and Benefits Report revealed the average superintendent pay reached $109,621. Progress? Perhaps. But silly me for thinking — especially when COVID-19 proved the golf course matters more than all other club amenities combined — that the average superintendent would be making more than the average general manager or director of golf in 2025. The pandemic further proved no position is more vital to the golf industry than a well-trained superintendent.
Robots will be mowing rampant
A course I played in high school, Valley Brook Country Club in suburban Pittsburgh, resorted to RG3 robotic greens mowers to maintain nine of its 27 holes and a practice green in 2014. A year later, the club was mowing all 27 holes with the units. The practice lasted until Cub Cadet shockingly and suddenly dropped its support of the mowers in early 2020.
Does anybody know of an American course using robotic mowers on greens in 2025?
Images of small, compact rotary mowers trimming rough and clubhouse grounds occasionally appear on social media feeds. A few courses, primarily in the western United States, have purchased FireFly Automatix AMP fairway units. But it’s unlikely an autonomous revolution will occur in the 2020s.
Courses will add more female restrooms
The National Golf Foundation reports nearly 8 million females played golf on a course in 2024, the fifth straight year the total has surpassed 6 million. Twenty-eight percent of on-course golfers are female, the highest proportion on record.
My eyes report the industry deserves a collective F for meeting the on-course comfort needs of the industry’s fastest growing segment in both numbers and financial influence.
Professional golf will institute and enforce a regular shot clock
I had too much confidence in the pooh-bahs running — or is it wrecking? — the professional game. Even baseball, a spectator sport sometimes more archaic than golf, successfully adopted a pitch clock in 2023.
Thank goodness for the emergence of YouTube golf. Why devote 5 hours, 41 minutes to watching a group of highly skilled players navigate 18 holes when you can view Phil Mickelson, Grant Horvat, Jon Rahm and Josh Allen complete the same number of holes on demand, spending a third of the time behind a screen? I also never envisioned “influencers” such as Horvat and an NFL quarterback involved in golf matches collecting millions of views.
Courses will follow Oakmont’s lead and remove thousands of trees
OMG. I was right about something!
Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s publisher + editor-in-chief.
