Superintendent's Forum

how did you know when you were ready for your first superintendent's job?

Bob Taeger  • Village Country Club • Lompoc, California

Taeger says he is as much a teacher as golf course superintendent. When he hires an assistant, he or she is put on a three-year plan. “The first year is for training,” he says, “and the second is for learning our system. In the third year I give them more responsibility. That means I can take longer vacations or get more involved in local associations. By that time they need me to be gone so they can learn all the little things.”

Taeger wants his assistants to leave with four key lessons:

“First,” he says, “they have to understand that their most important tool is their eyes. Our job is to see everything before the members do. They don’t necessarily have to fix the problems right away, but they have to be able to finish the sentence of a member who brings up a problem.”

The second lesson is that safety is no accident.

“Things happen for a reason,” Taeger says. “Just because an assistant hasn’t had an accident doesn’t mean he’s lucky. It means he is careful and conscientious.”

The third is to never panic, even if a main water line breaks or a hydraulic line fails. And the fourth lesson is: “It’s only grass; it will always grow back.”

“When I got confidence in my ability to do the job,” Taeger says, “I knew I was ready to be a golf course superintendent. I started to see things about the course on my own. What I like about this three-year program is it doesn’t allow the assistant or myself to get complacent. Plus, it gets me back to teaching.”

 

John Zimmers • Oakmont Country Club • Oakmont, Pennsylvania

Call it the Zimmers’ Rule: It’s always better to be overqualified than not qualified at all.

“An assistant may be a good grass grower,” he says, “but the candidate needs to put this in perspective when applying for the head job. If I’m interviewing you, I’m already expecting that you know how to grow grass. I want to know if you can manage a budget, recruit interns, make construction decisions, recognize quality workmanship, coordinate projects and send them out for bid. I try to get my staff involved in these areas because that’s what the people interviewing them are trying to find out. The closer they get to the way I’m thinking — and it doesn’t always mean I’m right — makes them adopt the mind-set of a superintendent.”

Zimmers gets his assistants involved in disciplinary actions and performance bonuses.

“They need experience in these areas,” he says, “because there are right and wrong ways to do things. And someone has to be willing to show them. College is great, but in our business turf students don’t get much information on setting up a budget, for example. Hopefully, someday these assistants will be better than I am, and that’s the best compliment I could ever get.”