Why are golf course "greenkeepers" undervalued?

Since I started working at a golf course, there are a few values of mine that have changed significantly. The most prominent of these is my perception of the job of a greenkeeper.

To be honest, before I entered this world, I barely understood their work. I had a somewhat idyllic image of them as "people who neatly mow the grass on the course."

However, now that I am on the ground and know what goes on behind the scenes, my perception has been turned 180 degrees. It is undoubtedly the greenkeeper who most significantly influences and supports the value of the "product" that is a golf course. Despite this, their social and economic standing in Japan can hardly be called high. The shortage of people entering the profession is also serious.

Where on earth does this distortion come from?

It is not just a job of mowing grass

To begin with, what does "course maintenance," led by the greenkeeper, actually organize? The land area of a typical golf course is roughly around 100 hectares. A vast expanse of nature, equivalent to more than 20 Tokyo Domes, is their stage.

Their mission is to control everything in the environment that makes a player's time comfortable, from assessing the condition of the grass within that space to the scattered trees, the amount of sand in the bunkers, the paving of cart paths, and even the overall landscape.

It is easy to say, but the reality is surprisingly logical and scientific. They decipher data on temperature and precipitation to predict the state of the grass weeks in advance. They control fertilizer down to the milligram. To prevent disease, they mobilize all their knowledge of chemistry to precisely apply fungicides. They maintain and operate heavy equipment and large machinery themselves. Furthermore, they handle everything from managing limited budgets to directing teams of craftsmen.

This is not mere "labor." It is agriculture, engineering, science, and above all, management itself.

The disparity in evaluation between Japan and the US

In the United States, the home of golf, they have established a solid status as highly specialized professionals. Locally, they are called "superintendents," and according to data from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA), their average annual salary reaches approximately $120,000 (about 18 million yen). (That is the average, not the maximum...) They are figures treated with respect equal to, or even greater than, the management team.

So, why are they so undervalued in Japan? After diving into it myself, I arrived at one answer.

It is that most Japanese people "do not know from personal experience the insane difficulty of 'managing' a lawn."

In the Japanese housing situation, it is very rare for a house to have a beautiful lawn covering the entire garden. We have overwhelmingly few opportunities in our daily lives to be on the side that "grows" grass. Even with a small garden, if you actually try to handle a lawn, it takes a desperate amount of care. Regular mowing, exquisite watering, the battle against weeds, measures against disease... If you take your eyes off it for even a little while, the grass visibly deteriorates.

Moreover, a golf course is "sports turf" that is trampled by spikes and run over by heavy carts by large numbers of players every day. While exposed to the fury of nature—the scorching heat of midsummer, typhoons, and long rains—they must constantly maintain conditions where the ball rolls beautifully. The difficulty of this is incomparable to a home lawn.

The biggest bottleneck: "Not knowing"

However, that difficulty is "invisible." Even when we see a beautifully finished green, we just think, "It's beautiful again today," and our imagination does not reach the blood-sweating thinking and maintenance processes behind it.

"Because you have never experienced it, its value is not conveyed."

This is not just a problem for golfers. Even among golf course management and general managers, there are many cases where, unless they have experienced the course maintenance site themselves by getting covered in mud, they do not truly understand its essential difficulty and importance.

Previously, in another article, I wrote about the saying "A hundred actions are not as good as one result" (the importance of taking action and producing results), with a note of self-admonition. However, in an organization where the preceding steps of "seeing" and "thinking" are missing, the "fruit" of the efforts on the ground will not be fairly evaluated.

Fortunately, we live in an era where we can share the reality of the field directly through social media and YouTube. In the golf course business, the greatest product value is the "turf." And the people who create that product with their lives on the line are none other than the staff.

I am in my fourth year of working at a golf course in the tropics. Because I am not the manager, I want more people to know the value of these incredibly cool craftsmen.

The next time you visit a golf course, please take a moment to look closely at the turf beneath your feet. You will find that it is packed with someone's knowledge, experience, and obsession that far exceeds our imagination.