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	CONSTANTLY ON PATROL against whatever could mar the experience: Glenn LaChapelle '88S, '92 near the iconic ancient apple tree at the Orchards in South Hadley. Photo by Ben Barnhart.

BEYOND THE CLOSE-CROPPED FAIRWAYS, OUT of sight of the clubhouses where dress codes are enforced, well away from the billiards-smooth greens on which ladies and gentlemen in two-toned shoes perform a quiet, ancient ritual combining courtesy and sport – behind the scenes at any golf course in the world, the golf course superintendent is stage-managing the daily drama of it all.

It is the "super" and his staff – working, typically, out of a modest collection of sheet-metal or cinder-block buildings – who labor to keep the course at optimum "playability." Mowing, watering, draining unwanted pools of water, scouting for pests and disease, they are constantly on patrol against whatever could mar the experience of playing golf on an exquisitely manicured course. All of this activity, even the removal of trees, falls under the heading of good turf management, so it comes as no surprise that the superintendents of some of the finest golf courses in the country are graduates of the turf grass management program at UMass’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture.

At the Orchards Golf Club in South Hadley, to take a nearby example, the superb private course of Mount Holyoke College is under the care of superintendent Glenn LaChapelle ’92, who completed his associate’s degree at Stockbridge in 1988. Formerly assistant super at the Brae Burn course in West Newton, LaChapelle was brought to the Orchards last year by Arnold Palmer Course Management, which had entered into a long-term lease agreement with the college and set about planning a restoration of the historic course.

IN TAKING THE JOB AT the Orchards, LaChapelle was coming home. He grew up in Wilbraham, where his mother still lives, and began his career in at the Hampden County Country Club. His inlaws live in Springfield, and his wife, Gina Langone LaChapelle ’88, gave birth to their daughter, Giavana, a year ago in January. So a move to be back near family was welcomed by all.

The homecoming has not been without challenges. The soaring popularity of golf and golf tournaments has pumped billions of dollars into courses and course management, and made professional managers like LaChapelle, who leads a staff of 20 during peak season, a necessity. But televised glimpses of the world’s premier courses lead to heightened expectations for course grooming. and as golfers turn out in ever-larger numbers on their home courses, their very presence can degrade the experience they’re looking for.

The Orchards is a good example of this dilemma. Designed and built in 1922 by Donald Ross, a Scottish immigrant acknowledged as the father of American golf course design, this 160-acre preserve of forests and fairways is "a great piece of property," says LaChapelle. Close as it is to the Mount Holyoke campus and South Hadley center, the Orchards feels, as it was intended to feel, like a remote, sheltered, and serene natural environment.

"The Orchards is an example of target golf, based on the lay of the land," says LaChapelle. "It has good routing, lots of interesting rolls and looks. Back when Ross laid out this course, they didn’t have the earth-moving equipment we have today. They used the terrain as it was."

But this beautiful bit of classic turf has age-related problems, many of them rooted in not being built for modern traffic. No cart paths were included in the plan: "Everyone walked then," says LaChapelle. It also anticipated far fewer players. A busy weekend at the Orchards today may host over 200 rounds, with many players riding in carts that rut the old, established turf. Aging drainage pipes have failed in some spots, leaving them slow to dry out, and areas of marsh have developed. This affects playability and mowability – never mind the ability to drive a golf cart.

THESE CONDITIONS MAKE LACHAPELLE'S NEAR-TERM priorities very clear: improve the cart paths, repair the drainage, and cut back trees. Trees are essential to the beauty of the course – after all, the club’s logo is a silhouette of an ancient apple tree that grows near the fourth hole – but "we’ve had an overgrowth here," LaChapelle says. "Trees affect the light reaching the turf, so we have to selectively thin – mostly those that are dead or diseased."

To the growing popularity of the game add another major trend affecting the golf super’s lot: In turf management as in agriculture as a whole, technology is burgeoning. Bolted like burglar alarms to the walls of LaChapelle’s office are components of the Orchards’s "Rain Bird" installation, a computer-managed system for monitoring water use and sounding thunderstorm alerts. Much care and analysis is also applied to the use of pesticides and herbicides against the natural threats that he and his crew are forever scouting out; the art to the science of maintaining a groomed environment, says LaChapelle, is in applying chemicals only in "micro-environments" and only when absolutely necessary.

Given the increasing role of science and the demands of managing people, equipment, and money, the super’s job is requiring more and more education. The national superintendents’ association has a new training program leading to "Class A" certification. At UMass, an expanded degree program at funnels graduates of the two-year Stockbridge curriculum into a bachelor’s track. The 11-week course in turf management offered when Professor Lawrence Dickinson arrived at UMass in 1927 evolved under his direction into a certificate program in the 1940s; after Dickinson retired, Joseph Troll ’65G, himself now retired in Amherst, assumed leadership. It was Troll who initiated annual turfgrass conferences in the Northeast.

It’s a testament to these men, says current Stockbridge head Nancy Garrabrants ’77, ’87G, that our turf grads are consistently the highest paid supers in the country, as well as thick on the ground in the region. LaChapelle’s own staff is well-seeded with Stockbridge products: His first assistant is Douglas Ranck ’96S, his second Paul Poreda ’00S.

LACHAPELLE'S OWN FOUR-YEAR DEGREE AT UMass was in journalism: as a student he not only interned at Hampden Golf Course but worked at the Holyoke Transcript. He says this training and experience have served him well in both a public affairs job with the Air National Guard, which he joined in 1984, and in writing for the monthly Orchards Golf Club newsletter. And while he liked the hands-on style of his Stockbridge education – especially the internships that stretched from March to September – LaChappelle says he approves of the changes, including shorter internship periods: "There’s more emphasis on management now," he says.

Emphasis on management (especially management of his chosen brand of turf) is central to the suggestions that LaChapelle, like any interested alumnus, has for his alma mater. He’d like to see UMass get its own golf course as a lab for the turf grass program, and he’d like to see more courses specific to the running of golf courses. With as many as 20 people to oversee during the peak season, he says, management and communication are not optional skills.

And it isn’t just employees who need to hear from the super. At an evening meeting at the Orchards early last summer, an audience of new and veteran members, gathered under a white-and-green striped tent, sat quietly through presentations from the general manager and the membership director; when LaChapelle was introduced, however, the questions began in earnest.

It had been a spring and summer of record rainfall, making the super’s job even harder than usual – keeping the fairways drained, marking firm routes for carts, repairing swampy, rutted paths. No one expected him to perform miracles, members assured him. But they also naturally want to shoot low scores on their home turf, and conditions that interfere are unwelcome.

"Don’t you think the rough is too high?" asked one man. "We’re not hosting the U.S. Open here, you know!" As LaChapelle rose with a smile to answer this and many similar questions, it was clear that he was being put to the test. Equally clear was that he was going to pass with flying colors.

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Classic turf

TURF: larger image

SIDEBAR: Keepers of the turf - a sampling of Stockbridge-trained supers

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