Sherwood Moore (2024)

The Metropolitan Golf Course Superintendents Association’s most prestigious award is reserved for a superintendent who has “advanced the professional image, status, and reputation of the golf course superintendent.” The honor is appropriately named the Sherwood A. Moore Award, recognizing a beloved practitioner who devoted more than half his life to serving the turfgrass management profession. Moore, a name well-known within the superintendent community but perhaps lesser known to the average golfer, built a strong reputation for mentoring many superintendents and was regarded as a pioneer in the modern era of golf course management.

Sherwood A. Moore was born in West Haven, Conn., in 1915. He graduated from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture (then called the Massachusetts Agriculture College) in 1937. Moore was a participant in UMass Amherst’s Winter School for Greenskeeper and Golf Course Foremen, the first program of its kind in the U.S.

Moore began his prolific career two years later in New Jersey at Lake Mohawk Country Club in Sparta, then Crestmont Country Club in West Orange, and Hollywood Golf Club in Deal. He also worked at Woodway Country Club in Darien, Conn., before serving his country in combat during World War II with the Eighth Air Force, the greatest air armada in history and the subject of the Apple TV docuseries Masters of the Air. In 1957 he became the superintendent at famed Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Just two years into his tenure at the club, he oversaw the 1959 U.S. Open, when Billy Casper won the first of his two U.S. Open titles.

Moore quickly became a leader within the superintendent community and was one of the first to use arsenicals for wide-scale control of Poa annua grass on fairways and the rough. A recap of Moore’s acceptance of the 1987 Green Section Award from the USGA noted that “he pioneered fairway contour mowing and using triplex green mowers on fairways. Sherwood worked closely with researchers and manufacturers in the use of new equipment and chemicals and their application techniques to actual golf course situations.”

Moore’s innovations are still used today, and his legacy remains in the well-manicured courses that we all enjoy.

He held official leadership roles as a board member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and was elected president of the association in 1962. He served as president of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of New Jersey in 1953–54 and

later the president of the Met GCSA in 1965–66. He spoke and participated in countless industry events, educational conferences, and field days, and authored many pieces that would help superintendents advance their own practices throughout the country.

But perhaps his greatest role was a mentor and teacher with newcomers to the profession. Countless superintendents in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York benefited from his willingness to take a young superintendent under his wing. The superintendent community is a closely-knit one, and under his guidance, many superintendents went on to their own successful careers around the country.

In a tribute to Sherwood after his passing in the GCSA of New Jersey’s newsletter, David Pease, the former longtime director of agronomy for the Monmouth County Park System, wrote: “I found Sherwood, with his presence of power and influence, to be an incredibly approachable person, coupled with what could only be described as a lovely sense of humor, spiced with inflection of wit. His charm and character warmed those around him. He has left an indelible mark on the hundreds of lives he came in contact with both professionally and socially.”

Bob Nielsen is finishing up his 43rd year at Bedford Golf and Tennis Club in Westchester County, N.Y., where he has been the head golf course superintendent since 1991. He was one of those young supers who met Sherwood early on and clearly remembers their first meeting his second year at Bedford. “I was just a laborer, I wasn’t even an assistant yet,” recalls Nielsen, who rode home from a Turfgrass Field Day at the University of Rhode Island with Sherwood and another colleague. “Sherwood didn’t know me from Adam.”

Moore and Nielsen were dropped off at Winged Foot after Moore offered to drive him home, but first, Nielsen got a front-row view as Sherwood inspected both courses – in his station wagon – after a day away.

“The entire time we were driving around, he was explaining what he was doing, the different practices they were using,” Nielsen adds. “It was just an amazing thing for me because I was just a second-year kid who wasn’t even sure what I was going to be doing, and he took that kind of time just to show me all around and gave me a ride home.”

That memory has stayed with Nielsen, who received the Sherwood A. Moore Award from the MetGCSA for his contributions to the industry in 2018.

Moore worked at Winged Foot for the 1980 U.S. Senior Open (the inaugural Senior Open) on the East Course, won by Roberto De Vincenzo of Argentina, and the 1984 U.S. Open, when Fuzzy Zoeller defeated Greg Norman in an 18-hole playoff. He then went north to Massachusetts, helping to develop the Captain’s Golf Course in Brewster. He was active with the Turf Advisory Service of the USGA and in the later years of his career, volunteered with the International Executive Service Corps by serving in developing African countries and consulted independently at golf courses throughout the world. He was awarded an

honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Massachusetts in 2006, shortly before he passed away.

He has received the most prestigious awards for his profession, including the USGA’s Green Section Award in 1987 and the GCSAA Old Tom Morris Award in 1990, presented to an individual who, through a continuing lifetime commitment to the game of golf, has helped to mold the welfare of the game in a manner and style exemplified by Old Tom Morris.

Through a career that spanned more than 65 years, Sherwood’s legacy remains through the lives he touched as well as the advancements to the game that golfers in the Met Area and beyond enjoy today. – Helen Farrelly