Left to right: Jada Ryckman, Kara Crain and Bridget King behind the scenes at High Pointe Golf Club. Photo courtesy of Bridget King
The turf industry is hardly balanced when it comes to its gender makeup. One recent industry study put the estimate of women on grounds crew staff as low as 3%. But at High Pointe Golf Club — a recently restored private club in Williamsburg, Mich. — a third of the staff is female. Eight of the 22 staff members are women.
Golf course superintendent Chris Danbrook says the staff’s gender makeup came to be pretty much by chance, and he’s glad it did.
“The women work harder than guys. It’s incredible,” says Danbrook, a seven-year GCSAA member. “We have some really good guys, but you get some high school kids that have excuses. The women don’t come with excuses. They come to work happy and ready to go.”
Danbrook says there are other differences that he appreciates in his female team members.
“Their attention to detail is amazing. And they don’t seem to forget what you tell them. They ask more questions, too, than the typical male employee — which I think is great, because they want to get it done right. They’re just detailed hard workers,” he says.
He says he thinks the women on staff have positively affected the men, too.
“The break rooms in the mornings for meetings … it’s just more alive,” Danbrook says. “It’s not just a bunch of dudes sitting around complaining. The guys have actually cleaned themselves up, their language and stuff like that. They know that they can’t be a typical guy on a guy workforce now that we have eight females working with us.”
After closing as a daily fee course amid the economic downturn of 2008, what was left of High Pointe Golf Club was purchased by an investor. For the past two years, the team led by Danbrook and Dan Lucas, the club’s director of agronomy, has grown at High Pointe, working with the course’s original designer Tom Doak. After restoring six of the original holes and building 12 new ones, the private course opened for play in 2024 and has about 150 members so far.
That makes High Pointe GC a rare opportunity for the team members to learn new skills, one that assistant-in-training Bridget King has relished.
“Chris and Dan have given women on the staff opportunities for more responsibility and have given us jobs that we’ve never done before so that we can learn and move up,” King, who is studying turfgrass science at Penn State, says. “They know that I want to become a superintendent, so they’re doing anything they can to build me up and gain that knowledge that I need to become an assistant and a superintendent someday,”
Another assistant-in-training on the team, Jada Ryckman, also plans to become a superintendent and agrees with King.
“At previous courses, I’ve been vocal that I wanted to learn, and they were like, ‘No, we’re not doing that — you’re going to keep doing what you’re qualified to do,’” Ryckman says. “It’s the stereotypical, ‘You’re a girl, this is heavy machinery, you can’t do this.’ Or, ‘Oh, this is too complicated.’
“At High Pointe, everybody is just eager to teach us anything we might not know. When I started there, I learned three new things just within the first two months. They ask if we’ve done this or that before, and if it’s ‘no,’ then it’s, ‘Well you’re going to learn today,’” she says.
Ryckman says she thinks the source of the difference is simple.
“I think it comes down to there’s more respect, genuinely. I can just feel it, the way they speak to me or are willing to help me learn, as well as all the other women we work with,” Ryckman says. “Chris is always available, and he’s super easy to talk to. You never have to ask for a one-on-one to talk about something. Everybody is very approachable and eager to help.”
She says she’s felt uncomfortable at other courses she’s worked at, but not at High Pointe.
“I’ve never felt uncomfortable (at High Pointe). I absolutely love every single one of my co-workers. They go out of their way to make it a great environment and a great place to be,” Ryckman says.
For his part, Danbrook says he would recommend other superintendents be proactive about hiring women.
“If there’s someone out there that you’ve maybe been on the fence about, just do it. It’s one of the best things that’s happened to (our team). It just changes the dynamic of the team for the better,” Danbrook says.
“I would suggest in your Indeed ad or wherever you’re advertising, just say, ‘Hiring males and females.’ I think some people might be interested in the job, but they’re scared to apply.”