Chuck Green, director of operations at Quixote Club in Sumter, S.C., will receive the Carolinas Golf Course Superintendents Association’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award. Green, 67, will be presented with the award during the association’s annual Conference and Trade Show in Myrtle Beach, S.C. from Nov. 18-20.
As a past president of the association, Green’s nomination was supported by an unprecedented 36 letters from fellow past presidents, turfgrass researchers, industry partners and fellow superintendents, some of whom Green mentored.
One of the latter group is Jeffrey Connell, now the general manager at Fort Jackson Golf Club in Columbia, S.C., who led the association in 2010 and was president of the South Carolina Golf Association in 2022-23.
“Chuck was part of a special generation of men who wanted to professionalize the association,” Connell wrote, referring to efforts Green and other association leaders made taking the association from part- to full-time management and growing the Conference and Trade Show by moving to a bigger venue.
When he served as president in 1996, the Carolinas had fewer than 1,000 members and an after-hours executive secretary running the operation. The Conference and Trade Show attracted less than 1,000 attendees. Now, the association has close to 1,900 members, a full-time staff of four and more than 2,000 people expected to attend next week’s conference.
According to the association, Green was also pivotal in establishing Clemson University’s Pee Dee Research and Education Center in Florence, S.C., where Bruce Martin became one of the foremost turfgrass experts in the country.
“Without 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,” Martin wrote in support of Green’s nomination. Until then, Martin’s research priorities were tobacco, cotton, corn and sorghum.
John Greene, CGCS president in 2003, wrote that he was “able to reap the benefits of the groundwork Chuck had laid out. He was instrumental in getting us away from poolside conferences and hotel basement trade shows. Chuck also was instrumental in getting Chuck Borman on board (as executive director). After that, the Carolinas GCSA took off like a rocket. Since retirement, I’ve done consulting work as far away as Nevada and California and quality superintendents, even that far away, know about and respect the Carolinas. Chuck is a big reason for that.”
In a 40-year career, Green served as superintendent at Florence Country Club, Columbia Country Club and helped establish nationally ranked Sage Valley Golf Club before becoming operations manager for the transformation of the former Sunset Country Club into Quixote Club.
The Carolinas GCSA Conference and Trade Show in Myrtle Beach features the association’s annual golf championship with more than 360 golfers, a two-day trade show with more than 410 booths sold and education seminars with more than 1,200 seats sold.
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