The Carolinas Golf Course Superintendents Association has grown through the years in size and influence like no other regional turf group.
Much of the credit for that growth can be attributed to the work and vision of longtime member and former association president Chuck Green (at right), the director of operations at the Quixote Club in Sumter, South Carolina.
Because of his contributions to the association, Green, 67, has been named the recipient of the Carolinas GCSA Distinguished Service Award. He will receive the award at the association's annual meeting and trade show scheduled for Nov. 18-20 in Myrtle Beach.
An unprecedented 36 nomination letters were submitted on Green's behalf from past Carolinas presidents, fellow superintendents, university researchers and industry supporters.
When Green served as association president in 1996, the Carolinas had fewer than 1,000 members, was run by an after-hours executive secretary and the conference and trade show attracted less than 1,000 attendees.
Today, the association has close to 1,900 members and has transitioned from part- to full-time management with a full-time staff of four. Its conference and trade show grew — literally — into its current digs at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center where it has become the largest regional event in the country for golf course superintendents. More than 2,000 people and 400 trade show exhibitors are expected at this year's two-day conference.
Among those nominating Green was Jeffrey Connell, general manager at Fort Jackson Golf Club in Columbia, South Carolina. Connell was president of the Carolinas GCSA in 2010 and the South Carolina Golf Association in 2022-23.
"Chuck was part of a special generation of men who wanted to professionalize the association," Connell said.
(W)ithout Chuck's intervention and willingness to intercede and plead my case it would have been unlikely that we would ever have built our program at Florence.
In a 40-year career in the turf industry, Green was superintendent at Florence Country Club and Columbia Country Club. In 2000, he grew-in Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville, South Carolina, where he remained for 19 years. He was named operations manager at Sunset Country Club in 2019 where he headed up the transition to the reinvented Quixote Club. Part of that transition was a $13 million renovation in 2020.
Green also played a lead role in helping advance turfgrass research in the Carolinas. He played a pivotal role in the establishment of Clemson University's Pee Dee Research and Education Center in Florence, South Carolina, which became synonymous with the work of retired Clemson plant pathologist Bruce Martin, Ph.D.
The Clemson research center was established in 1911 in Darlington, South Carolina, but was reinvented in 1985 in its current location in Florence. Until 1985, Martin's research focused primarily on corn, cotton, sorghum and tobacco.
"(W)ithout Chuck's intervention and willingness to intercede and plead my case," Martin wrote in nominating Green for the award, "it would have been unlikely that we would ever have built our program at Florence."