Competitive golfers look for lines off the tee, among many other pieces of their game plans. They are quite a focused lot.
Katrin Wolfe of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, has played in eight USGA championships and advanced to the round of 16 as the No. 62 seed at the 2023 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, losing to eventual finalist Kelsey Chugg, the 2017 champion. Wolfe has street cred as a player.
But because her job is a field staff representative for the Mid-Atlantic region of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, she has a little different perspective on what she sees on the course in competition.
“My favorite part of the job is to thank the superintendents and their crews for the work that they do,” Wolfe said. “They don’t always get the thank yous they deserve, and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do this great sport if it wasn’t for their great work. They put in a lot of long hours. I just hope I can make their jobs better.”
Wolfe, who has been the Pennsylvania Women’s Mid-Amateur runner-up in the past five years, watches for course conditions with perhaps a keener eye than most.
“I look at the greens and the green complexes,” said Wolfe, a native of Johnstown who learned the game under her father’s direction at Sunnehanna Country Club. “But I also look at the kinds of sand and grass lengths for pitching and chipping.”
Wolfe, who played golf at Penn State in 2003-06 and was a Women’s Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholar and an Academic All-Big Ten choice, joined the GSCAA in May 2021. Her territory covers association chapters in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and she is one of nine regional field staff members.
Before the GSCAA, she was a college athletics administrator, specializing in compliance. She worked for three years at East Stroudsburg University, with responsibility for 22 sports. Previously, she served in a similar role for seven years at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown. The holder of an undergraduate degree in kinesiology from Penn State, Wolfe also earned a master’s in exercise physiology from West Virginia and a master’s in higher education management from the University of Pittsburgh.
Education to golf has been what Wolfe calls “an interesting journey.”
“As a competitive amateur golfer, you never have enough time. Now I am sneaking it in. It used to be hours, and now it’s 45 minutes.” — Katrin Wolfe
“At the GCSAA, I work in chapter and membership relations, which is similar to compliance, so it was an easy transition.”
Among her major responsibilities are chapter events and visits, best practices as well as local and regional advocacy work in government affairs and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“We want those agencies to know what we are doing in the golf course world for environmental standards,” Wolfe said.
Because superintendents in the Northeast are busiest in the summer, her travel to member clubs allows her time, albeit limited, to work on her game.
“As a competitive amateur golfer, you never have enough time,” Wolfe said. “Now I am sneaking it in. It used to be hours, and now it’s 45 minutes.”
In the spring and fall, she hits the road for annual meetings and education seminars. She cites visiting colleges with turf programs as a point of emphasis.
Wolfe also relishes the GSCAA’s work with The First Green, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) environmental outreach that uses the golf course as a living laboratory, according to the GCSAA website. Within the program, students in grades K-12 participate hands-on in a wide range of STEM-based, golf course-related activities.
Wolfe’s competitive calendar had been focused on the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur at Brae Burn Country Club in West Newton, Massachusetts this week, where she failed to advance to match play. In addition, she has ambitions to qualify for the 2025 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship with Krissy Ortiz, an administrator at Georgian Court University in New Jersey.
A member of Northampton Country Club in Easton, Wolfe aspires to a career in golf – as a leader.
“I love the golf association world. I would love to continue in that. I would love to continue in a leadership role,” she said, adding that she loves the golf industry and her job at the GCSAA.
Wolfe credits her attendance at Penn State with a large dose of her personal growth.
“The opportunity to play golf at Penn State would have been the icing on the cake, and I got that opportunity,” she said. “My golf game grew with it. It was confidence, and fitness. I gained distance and golf course management.”
A fitness buff, Wolfe loves HIIT (high-intensity interval training), Peloton biking and hiking, emphasizing a recent trip to the Grand Canyon. But she also likes tamer pursuits. “When you travel so much for work, you realize how great it is to be home reading a book.”
Perhaps, something about best practices for mowing greens?