For Annabelle Southall, greenkeeper at Royal Canberra Golf Club, it took a single day in the job to learn both how hard and how rewarding it can be.

It was the end of 2021, and 18-year-old Southall, an outdoors lover who had previously worked as a casual for a landscaping firm, had picked up an apprenticeship on the staff at RCGC, one of the most beautiful courses in the country.

As it happened, the club was in the early throes of replacing the fairway grass with Santa Ana Couch, and a trial was required on the seventh fairway. So down she went on to hands and knees, sodding turf.

For a full week.

“It was definitely a baptism of fire,” Southall recalled this week.

“I can’t remember how many square metres of turf we had to lay out, but it was all by hand. It was 12-hour days for the whole week.”

It might have broken her spirit. But Southall has the passion that is so typical of greenkeeping staff around Australia. She did not flinch.

“It was a good experience, but not easy,” she said. “My boss (RCGC superintendent Ryan Stores) still mentions it today, like ‘we knew if you could make it through that week, you’d still be here’.”

Fast forward four years and Southall is the Australian Sports Turf Management Association’s Graduate of the Year for the ACT, a qualified sports turf manager and part of a team of 25.

Tuesday was Thank A Super Day around the world, and she is one of the brilliant, young people who are creating great golf surfaces throughout the country.

Southall had no initial connection with golf; in fact, she has never picked up a club although she admits that one day, she would like to.

It was the outdoors that drew her to the job. The hundreds of kangaroos and the plethora of birdlife keep her smiling as she works.

“I’m a huge nature-lover,” she said. “I love getting to see the animals as well, while I’m working. I can’t see myself sitting behind a desk all day.”

Her day begins with an alarm at 4.30am and she is on site by 5.30am, which is challenging in Canberra’s cold winters. The sight of the hot air balloons passing mitigates the cold feeling in her bones.

The variation in her work is another bonus. “You could be doing anything,” she said. “Today I got in early and I sprayed greens and right now, I’m replacing sprinklers. We’re always doing something different.”

She is across all the tasks, drives a tractor, handles a skid steer and a forklift.

“You get a lot of satisfaction out of it, even the smaller jobs. Even just raking bunkers, you look back at what you’ve done and you see the impact that you have, I guess.

“I don’t know if it’s expertise but my favourite thing is walk-mowing. I think a lot of greenkeepers would say that.

“When you’re having a good day, you’re hitting the straight lines and you look back and you can see it.”

The criticism that some greenkeeping staff can suffer in golf clubs is taken philosophically. “You get some rude comments, but water off a duck’s back! Some people come up and will say ‘nice job with the greens’, things like that.”

Being a woman in a male-skewed industry she is leading a significant change in the sport, with the ASTMA’s Women in Turf strategy being a catalyst. Under this program, women are placed in voluntary positions on greenkeeping teams, including at events.

Southall went to work at the Webex Players Series tournament in Cobram Barooga in 2023 with five other women and loved the experience. “I think because what we do is machine-orientated and there’s not that much heavy lifting, it’s been good,” she said. “I think there are other trades that are not as equal.”

As for that seventh fairway that she began her journey upon, it’s turning green as the spring kicks in. Royal Canberra is about to extend the Santa Ana grass to other parts of the course.

And Annabelle Southall can look at it with justifiable pride.