The statue of Old Tom Morris is as endearing a figure as the name of the profession he performed more than 100 years ago at St. Andrew’s in Scotland: greenkeeper. The word commands respect.

If the big building located just to the west of 15th and Wakarusa were called the Golf Course Greenkeeper Association of America, everyone would know what it meant. Instead, it’s the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America that has the statue of Morris greeting visitors.

Huh? Superintendent triggers the word school. Golf fetches the word summer. Summer and school don’t necessarily mesh.

Anyway, the GCSAA has more than 20,000 members, said Steve Mona, Chief Executive Officer of the organization that employs 120 people in Lawrence.

Mona, better known this past winter as former Kansas University basketball player Stephen Vinson’s stepfather, explains the evolution of a profession responsible for eliminating as many excuses as possible for those of us hackers who need them after poor performances.

Steve Mona stands in front of a statue of Old Tom Morris at the Golf Course Superintendents Association meeting Friday in Lawrence. Morris was the first Greenkeeper at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Scotland.

The first name was the National Association of Greenkeepers of America, formed in 1926. In 1955, Mona said, it changed to the current name.

The name change reflected the growth in responsibilities of those who make sure the grass stays green and healthy.

“The first period could be described as the art of greenkeeping,” Mona said. “For the most part, they were not professionally educated. They basically got on a golf course crew and kind of worked their way up. They learned the craft – and it really was a craft – as they went along. They usually trained under a greenkeeper, and eventually they found themselves as a greenkeeper, and a lot of it was passed along within families.”

Roughly 50 years ago, Mona said, that began to change.

“It became the science of agronomy, and so it was an art, and it evolved into a science,” Mona said. “That’s when people in large numbers started going to schools that offered turf grass management or agronomy programs, and it really changed from an art to a science. And in the last 10, 15 years, it’s turned into the business of golf course management.

“Today’s superintendent is really as much a business manager who’s managing the golf course, more than anything else. They don’t spend the majority of their time out on the golf course, and they certainly don’t spend the majority of their time operating a greens mower or a fairway mower. They spend almost no time doing that. Their job is really managerial, supervising staff, budgeting, forecasting, all that sort of interfacing with the overall management of the facility.”

Mona clarified something else I’ve often wondered about: What’s the difference between a greenkeeper and a greenskeeper? “If someone works for a superintendent, or in the past worked for a greenkeeper, they are a greenskeeper. If you said someone was a greenkeeper, then you knew that person was the head of the course.”

Mona is the head of the organization that sees that the greens are green and true, even when nature tries to undermine the best-laid plans.