For 14 years, The Aquatrols Company and Golf Course Industry magazine worked together to host the Super Social Media awards, recognizing the best social media content generated by the turf community. Winners were designated for the best X (Twitter) feed, best use of video and a few other categories. The awards were popular, recognizing the people working to share their joys, challenges and funny moments online.
This year, moving in a different direction, the Excellence in Mentorship Awards began with an inaugural class of six outstanding leaders.
Superintendents can easily name the mentors who impacted their career trajectory. Many will tell you that their influence transcends being professional, that their mentors have changed their lives. Why? Why is mentoring so integral to greenkeeping?
Part of it is the structure of the industry — the way that learning takes place. There are turf programs and formal education, but classroom knowledge has to be applied in a hands-on way to complete the understanding. Some people will forgo formal education, preferring to learn everything in the field, but professors can be mentors, too, and there are no shortcuts. A golf course is a natural, living, breathing entity with its own personality — and multiple microclimates. You have to see it. You have to get to know it.
Crews at many golf properties also involve a lot of solitary positions — one superintendent, one assistant, one mechanic, one irrigation specialist. You work has a team, but this arrangement lends itself to developing a wider support network — the superintendent at the next course over, your mentor, your friends from school or the ones you make along the way. Problem-solving is a bonding activity, and greenkeepers do this constantly.
Greenkeeping is evolving and you can run your irrigation system from your phone, but you still need to be there in person to manage the team and the course effectively. The responsibilities are inextricable from the elements — weather and vegetative growth habits — so decisions are grounded in real-time conditions. Making the right ones require day-in, day-out, boots-on-the-ground experience and practice.
Enter mentors — someone to guide you through how to handle those decisions, not to mention the guidance and encouragement required for the gentle diplomacy involving members, greens committees, general managers, and the staff and crew. An aptitude with people can take time to develop, and there are budgeting issues, capital investments and new products and chemistries to understand. Being an outstanding greenkeeper requires a wide variety of skills. These skills are easier to emulate rather than discover, and these talents are better demonstrated by someone who has been there, someone who has the care and patience to share their ways.
"Almost everyone you talk to will tell you that they had a mentor, or maybe two or three, that helped them get to where they are, or even changed their lives," says Guy Cipriano, publisher and editor-in-chief of Golf Course Industry magazine. "This runs deeper than careers. It’s a passion industry. When you are in a vocation like this you need to be surrounded by other passionate people who can guide you. Social media is about sharing, and mentorship is about sharing, too. We just went from one form of sharing to another."
In early December, Tom Valentine, business development manager at The Aquatrols Company, shared the idea with Cipriano, and in a matter of weeks, nearly three dozen mentors had been nominated with heartfelt letters from their mentees, describing their teaching and lifelong impact. Some mentors were nominated by multiple people. There were so many wonderful submissions, that they have all been automatically included for next year’s awards. It was a tremendous response and an indication of how much mentorship means within the industry.
The impact was evident during the awards show, which was held during the PGA Show in January. A guitarist played cool tunes while people gathered and others grabbed a drink at the open bar. Those things added to the atmosphere, but around the Excellence in Mentorship Awards, photos were being taken, there were hugs and handshakes, and a few teary eyes. The joy was palpable. It was a treasured time together, and a remarkable gathering of highly successful individuals, present to acknowledge connections beyond accomplishments.
Valentine is the son and grandson of golf course superintendents, and he spent his youth working on golf courses and witnessing mentorship in action.
"My father mentored the turf students on his crew, but I also watched many of his assistants be active mentors of these young student interns," Valentine says. "Mentoring is so prevalent in the turf profession that sometimes you don’t even realize it’s happening. An agronomic education is incomplete without it. The tree branches of one mentor over the decades can be tracked to dozens upon dozens of successful careers."
It’s also important to note that mentoring is not restricted to "top-100 courses," or budget or region. It’s a global, industry-wide institution.
"Mentors feel the benevolent responsibility to ‘pay it forward’ and it’s the foundational reason why our industry thrives from generation to generation," Valentine says. "Golf course mentors teach and prepare young people for a lifestyle. The Excellence in Mentorship Awards are a success if they help people reflect on and appreciate their own influences, and consider who they could be mentoring."
The 2026 class of the Excellence in Mentorship Awards included Brian Bossert (superintendent), Collier Miller (agronomy director), Justin Sims (director of grounds and facilities), Courtney Young (director of agronomy), John Zimmers (superintendent), and the late Dr. Bruce Martin (turfgrass pathologist). Following a brief ceremony for the 2026 honorees, a panel discussion featured Zimmers of Inverness Club, Young of Ansley Golf Club and Tim Moraghan of Aspire Golf.
Articles were written about each of the award recipients in advance of the show, sharing thoughts from the mentors and mentees, many who had surprised their mentor with the nomination. They will all tell you that it is just as important and fulfilling to be a mentor, as it is to have been on the receiving end of mentoring. That’s why mentoring in greenkeeping has had such an immense impact on the industry, and why it will continue.
"Mentorship is a deep thing," Cipriano says. "This is not like honoring someone for the product they put out, this is honoring someone for something much more enduring. We are honoring people for what makes this aspect of the golf industry special. Mentorship personifies what people in the golf course maintenance community are all about."
