JIM BAIRD COULD BE SITTING next to you in a golf cart donning a name tag while verbalizing his title, experience and responsibilities, and 99 percent of golfers would remain in the dark on the man’s singular impact and influence.

Such is the anonymity of a career in turfgrass.

Dry in wit, ample in acumen and passionate about his métier, Dr. Jim Baird doesn’t need you to know his name, but he wants you to know his game.

“I realize that grass isn’t for everyone, and I don’t need people necessarily to know me, but to know more about turf, the benefits and importance of it,” says Baird. “But knowing about me personally? That’s not really how I function.”

A professor and turfgrass extension specialist at the University of California Riverside, the 62-year-old Baird is the lone faculty member (“Unfortunately,” he quips) dedicated to turfgrass across the 10 campuses of the UC system, having taken his post in 2008 after nine years with the USGA Green Section.

Such singularity finds Baird as the entire state’s turfgrass go-to guy, and, concurrently, its self-appointed cheerleader.

“My position wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the golf industry; it’s the driving force,” Baird says. “When my predecessor retired around 2000, the university was going to do away with the position, but the golf industry stepped up and said, ‘We need somebody.”

Such need has seen Baird leading a celebrated charge for the continued creation of drought-tolerant, warm-season hybrid Bermudagrasses.

“We’d like to get to a point someday — and I believe we can, though it could be past my scope as a UC employee — that we can have grasses for this climate where there is no overseed.”

Baird’s work is often aimed at protecting our most precious resource — water.

“We need to do all we can to conserve water, and, starting with the right species, the right cultivars, that’s the foundation of the pyramid, if you will,” he continues. “Having the right grasses can go a long way toward conserving water.”

Alongside Baird, the SCGA has been instrumental in their longstanding advocacy to reshape the narrative around golf’s water usage to something far more accurate. And the more honest you are in talking about golf and water, the more desirable that narrative proves to be.

“Golf, no pun intended, can be a four-letter word for people outside the game, who think all it does is waste water, [that] it’s not used for food consumption or that sort of thing,” he says. “It’s a consensus, unfortunately, that turf just isn’t that needed. So, ultimately, I’d like people to have a better idea of why turf is beneficial. Golfers, for obvious reasons, have a little bit better perspective on that, but I think everyone else just kind of views it as something that’s not really that necessary.”

Counteracting skeptics, Baird’s work to produce year-round Bermudagrasses that can hold their aesthetic in the wintertime months of an otherwise Mediterranean climate has borne renowned results, capturing the broad agronomy interests of fields, fairways and lawns.

Championed for both color retention and drought resistance, Baird and his program recently unveiled two new hybrid Bermudagrasses — Coachella and Presidio — which represent a near-decade of testing. With Presidio awaiting its impending release, Coachella has enjoyed a turfgrass splash.

“Right now, everything that’s been produced with Coachella has been sold already,” enthuses Baird. “The first golf course to install Coachella, I think it was nearly 70 acres, was The Farms (GC) in Rancho Santa Fe, and the next project has already started at Big Canyon (CC) in Newport Beach, where they’re installing something in the same neighborhood of acreage. And there are other projects that are also considering Coachella right now.”

With further and newer hybrid grasses coming down the pipeline in the years ahead, Baird’s inbox is flush with inquiries from courses, homeowners and athletic fi elds. And while the vast majority of golfers may never truly know the impact or influence of Dr. James Baird, perhaps all one needs to appreciate is that the cheerleader is winning.