In 1981 I was having a few pints with an opponent after a game of rugby and he asked me what I did for a living. I said that I was a Greenkeeper. “Oh, one of those guys who cuts grass on a golf course” he retorted. (I was in fact the Course Manager at Sudbury Golf Club). After mumbling something about it being a bit more involved than that, I asked him what he did. “I’m a Transparent Partition Maintenance Engineer”. After working it out “Oh, one of those guys who cleans windows” I retorted. From that moment on I made sure that I described myself as a Golf Course Manager and not ‘just’ a greenkeeper. Well that was twenty five years ago and still the profession of ‘Greenkeeping’ has an anomaly over what title to give the person who manages the golf course. Remember we are not alone in this. The Golf Club Secretaries have recently changed their Association's title to The Golf Club Managers’ Association as this title better reflects their role today.
Tradition
As is usual with our game tradition and history has a huge part to play in this debate. In 1851 a useful golfer by the name of Tom Morris accepted an invitation of employment as ‘Keeper of the Green’ at Prestwick Golf Club and, after fourteen years there, he returned to St Andrews as Keeper of the Green, a position he held until 1903. For those who have not been exposed to the Scottish history of the game, (where the hell do you work, not in England that’s for sure), the ‘Green’ being the whole of the area that the golf course was laid out over. So ‘Auld Tom’ was responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the whole of the course not just the greens.
At some point near the turn of the 19th century the title Keeper of the Green became Head Greenkeeper, probably to do with the titleholder having the best leadership skills and being the most knowledgeable of the greens staff. Then, around the late 1970s the title of Course Manager appeared. I would be interesting to find out who was the first person to hold this title and which club was enlightened enough to add it to their employment contracts.
Moving on and up
In many industries, not just golf, titles have not changed in decades but the jobs they describe have undergone a complete transformation. For me the point is that today managers of golf courses are all increasingly multi-skilled and deserve recognition of that fact. A recent survey of 1,500 office workers found that 70% would choose a more motivational role or job title over a pay rise. Is this just vanity, or are there advantages to having a job that sounds professional rather than an historical standard?
In the twelve month period from 22
This is your place of work. Without your skills as a greenkeeper, a manager of people, a communicator and machinery operator, your course would not look this good and the club management and its members would soon be having a word in your shell like!
KEVIN MUNT, Principle Consultant at KMgC asks ...
DOES IT M What’s in a name and
October 2006 to September 2007 Greenkeeper International magazine advertised a total of fifty three senior turf management roles at golf clubs. Thirty three of these jobs were titled ‘Head Greenkeeper’ with fifteen being titled ‘Course Manager’, of the remaining five, four had the word ‘Superintendent’ in the title, the other being entitled ‘Estates Manager’.
Of the jobs advertised 62% still carry the moniker of Head Greenkeeper with 28% being named Course Manager, even if we add in the ‘Superintendents’ it appears that the title of Head Greenkeeper outnumbers the title with ‘manager’ in it by two to one. Is this just tradition plodding on, a reflection of the amount of store that the majority of clubs put into the managerial element of golf course maintenance? Or is it a lack of confidence or ambition by the people
who would be filling these roles? I leave you to draw your own conclusion but I suspect that it is an element of all three.
Professional Bodies View
Here is an extract from the BIGGA website on this subject:
“Managers can be called, for example, Head Greenkeeper or Golf Course Manager. It is recommended that they are all called managers for job specification, salary and terms and conditions of service”.
Whilst it seems to be recognised that both titles should be treated as the same for employment condition purposes, the titles clearly do not have the same connotation in the wider arena. You shouldn’t have to get your employment
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