Participants in the National Golf Day Community Service Project pose for a group photo in front of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Participants in the effort beautified the grounds around the National Mall and at Langston Golf Course. Photo courtesy of Ryan Deering
Steven Spatafore is something of an anomaly, if not as a golf course superintendent, then certainly as an American.
He’s actually interested in politics.
“I’ve always been a very politically active person,” says Spatafore, the GCSAA Class A superintendent at Contra Costa Country Club in Pleasant Hill, Calif., and 10-year association member. “I considered public policy as a minor
in college, but I never completed it. I have friends who work in politics, and I was always interested in that as a side career path.”
Spatafore has found a way to merge his actual career with his interests in the past. He has participated in some state-level advocacy efforts on behalf of the golf industry, is a grassroots ambassador and serves on the GCSAA Political Action Committee.
And this year, he took it up a notch, attending his first National Golf Day in the nation’s capital.
“It worked out with the event schedule at the club this year,” Spatafore says. “May is generally a month where we have many major club events. But I didn’t have anything that week, so it worked out.”
Steven Spatafore sent so many selfies back home, his wife was taken aback. Photo courtesy of Steven Spatafore
It wasn’t Spatafore’s first trip to Washington, D.C., but it was his first since middle school.
His time at the heart of American governance did not disappoint.
“One of the biggest things that hit me during the whole process was, the cool thing about our system of government is the fact that we get to interact with the people who lead the country,” Spatafore says. “We were able to go building
to building, meeting to meeting, throughout the days we were there talking to all these people.”
That, of course, is the whole point of National Golf Day, a nearly weeklong event in Washington that serves as the ultimate advocacy event for the American Golf Industries Coalition, of which GCSAA is one of the four original members.
The 16th edition of NGD was held May 7-10 of this year.
And Spatafore was thrilled to be a part of it.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I took more photos of the surroundings and myself in those places than I normally do on trips. My wife was surprised how many photos there were of me. There was just this feeling of awe. For someone who follows
politics, to be in those spaces that played so many important roles in our country’s history, to walk through them and have meetings in them, it’s special to think about all the people who were there before you.
“It really does spark something sentimental in you.”
Another NGD rookie, Ryan Deering, poses inside the Capitol Rotunda. Photo courtesy of Ryan Deering
A reluctant rookie
Not the surroundings but certainly the gravity of them sparked something else entirely in Ryan Deering, another NGD first-timer.
Deering, equipment manager at Rolling Green Country Club in Arlington Heights, Ill., is the first EM to participate in National Golf Day. He almost didn’t.
“The day before, I almost said, ‘Nope, not going,’” Deering says with a laugh. “My wife said, ‘You absolutely have to go. You signed up for this. You get the chance to go, you have to go.’”
Buoyed by his wife’s pep talk, Deering eventually came around.
“When I was all suited up,” the three-year GCSAA member says, “I was like, ‘I can do this.’”
As it turns out, Deering’s concerns were overblown.
“It took a little icebreaking at the initial reception,” he says. “Some of the guys had met each other before. I was kind of an EM out of water. But once I started talking to superintendents and getting to know them, everybody was very
kind.”
Events on May 8 included discussions between GCSAA’s Government Affairs Committee and congressional staffers from the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, as well as a key-issues briefing to prepare participants for their meetings the next day.
The pinnacle of National Golf Day came on May 9, when 203 of the 280 overall NGD participants held 228 legislative meetings on Capitol Hill. Those 203 participants represented 38 states.
More Community Service Project volunteers. Photos by Tyler Stover
The three key issues shared with legislators and their staffs were:
The Personal Health Investment Today (PHIT) Act, bipartisan legislation that would allow Americans to use some of the money saved on their pre-tax health savings and flexible spending accounts toward qualified sports and fitness purchases, such as gym
memberships and fitness equipment — and golf greens fees, lessons, tournaments and clinics.
A request that turfgrass research be reauthorized via the National Turfgrass Research Initiative in the 2024 Farm Bill. The golf industry additionally asked for a $5 million appropriation to fund the NTRI, plus $2 million for a comprehensive national
statistical survey of turfgrass as part of that bill.
And H.R. 3124, a bill that seeks to modernize the U.S. tax code and, critically, to remove golf from the exclusionary list tied to disaster tax relief. The golf contingent picked up a win on that front almost immediately, when Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.)
— who said at the GCSAAPAC reception on May 9 that he’d become a co-signer on that bill — did just that the following day, along with Reps. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) and Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), ensuring significant bipartisan support.
Deering was particularly keen on the PHIT Act.
“I’m not a guy to talk about turfgrass, but I’m a guy who can talk about (college-saving) 529 plans and the PHIT Act and why it’s important to bring back trades,” says Deering, who recently “tumbled” into the
golf industry after 15 years as a small-engine mechanic and time spent as a store manager at a big-box home-improvement retailer. “I think it’s crucial, and I got to talk about subjects that matter to me personally.”
Same goes for Spatafore, although he was a guy to talk about turfgrass — specifically the importance of turfgrass research and that ask in the Farm Bill. “I think for myself, the biggest thing that was the most impactful was the need for turfgrass
research in the Farm Bill,” he said. “We have a strong chapter in California that supports a couple of research institutions very well. But the need to move into 21st-century grass types and 21st-century solutions is going to require a
lot more money, and anything that would make it easier would be hugely impactful.”
The fact he’s a California superintendent-advocate often means Spatafore finds himself in the forefront of legislative issues that often start on the Left Coast and work right.
“I think it’s very, very important that California superintendents get involved at the local and state levels,” Spatafore says. “There’s a common expression that’s been used by every single California politician for
the last 50 years, whether you look at it as positive or negative: ‘As goes California, so goes the nation.’ The battles we’re facing now are the battles others will be facing 10 to 15 years down the road. We’re on the front
end of it.”
Front row, from left: GCSAA’s Bob Helland; Doug Dykstra, CGCS; Marc Weston, CGCS; GCSAA’s Chava McKeel; and Jean Esposito, CGCS; middle row, from left: GCSAA COO Kevin Sunderman, CGCS; Chris Cook, CGCS; Mitch Savage, CGCS; Eric Richardson; and Eric David, CGCS; back row from left, David Robinson, CGCS; Chris Steigelman, CGCS; and Matt Gourlay, CGCS, MG.
‘They’re just normal people’
On the back end of National Golf Day, 202 participants from AGIC took part in the annual Community Service Project on May 10. The 2024 project involved beautification projects at the National Mall and historic Langston Golf Course, plus a First Green
event at Langston.
For Spatafore, at least, the whole trip served to buttress his belief that politics is not something to avoid.
“One thing I’ve always been told and had reiterated is, we’re all just people. You’re just talking to people,” he said. “Staffers, politicians … they all have day-to-day lives, families, whatever. They’re
just normal people. There’s no need to fear them. They’re there to listen to you. This was a good reminder.”
Would Spatafore like to return?
“I hope to,” he said.
And would Deering, the first EM to participate in National Golf Day, like to become the second as well?
“I’ve already been invited back from my chapter,” said Deering, who picked up the nickname “Unicorn,” much to his daughter’s delight, because he ended up front-and-center for the group photo in front of the Jefferson
Memorial. “They said, ‘Nice job. You’re invited back.’ I just hope I’m not the only equipment manager. It was such a great experience. All the superintendents were really welcoming. If any other equipment manager wants
to go and is given the opportunity, go. It’s so crucial to the golf industry.”
Andrew Hartsock (ahartsock@gcsaa.org) is GCM’s editor-in-chief.