Talk to the hand (puppet): a superintendent shares his love for… ventriloquy?

We know superintendents are great at mowing and growing. But in many cases, their skills extend well beyond agronomy. This week, in a departure from our usual turf-care focus, we shine a spotlight on the unlikely side-career of Conrad Curtis, a longtime member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.

Like a lot of superintendents, Curtis Conrad has a canine sidekick. But as golf dogs go, he’s a breed apart. 

He does not chase geese or harass rodents. He is not fast or fierce or endlessly energetic. From a maintenance standpoint, he’s pretty much useless. 

But you know pooches. It’s hard to live without them. Where Ziggy comes in handy is as a loyal companion and a lively conversationalist, as you’ll see in the clip below.

With floppy ears and a soft brown coat, Ziggy is one of many chatty co-stars Conrad has enlisted while moonlighting as a ventriloquist, a side-career that took root some 40 years ago, around the same time that he was getting into golf agronomy. 

How did those unlikely twin interests come about? Born and raised in Michigan, Conrad, who is 65, was an entertainer from an early age. A shredder on guitar, he played in a rock band throughout high school and was drawn by the lure of a life on stage. He dreamed of becoming a solo performer. Well, sort of solo. Because working with a puppet was the way he chose to go.

It happened in the 1980s, after Conrad had relocated to Florida and taken up a job in a landscape nursery. One thing led to another, and before long, Conrad had transferred his budding landscape skills to golf, a game he’d played — and loved — growing up. 

Fresh air. Exertion. Something different every day. Maintenance work was right up Conrad’s alley. But as much as he enjoyed his fledgling career, he still felt the itch to entertain.

Lifestyle

As a kid, he’d been charmed by the likes of Edgar Bergen (Candace’s father) and Charlie McCarthy, giants of ventriloquy who got prime-time billing on such glittery platforms as “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Memories of those moments inspired him to learn more about the field.

In the mid-1980s, Conrad attended a ventriloquist convention in Cincinnati (the biggest event of its kind in the world, if you’re keeping score at home), and the rest is history. He bought his first puppet and began to hone his craft.

Books could be written — and, in fact, they have — on what it takes to talk without moving one’s lips while manipulating a hand puppet and making people laugh. There’s a lot to ventriloquy. For one thing, like golf, it calls for stretching, though the only body part you need to stretch is your mouth. 

“I used to do the exercises in my car,” Conrad said.  

Some words are tougher to say than others, including any that start with “m,” which may explain why you rarely hear ventriloquists at golf tournaments shouting “mashed potatoes!” Or it may not.

No matter how well you fine-tune your skills, ventriloquy is not an easy path to riches. Conrad never quit his day job. Among the many industry posts he held, his longest tenure was at El Rio Golf Course, in North Myers, Fla., where he served as head superintendent for 15 years. He considered retiring. But more recently, he found a happy compromise by signing on as assistant superintendent at Stoneybrook Golf Club, in Estero.

All along, he has kept conversing with hand puppets, often before an audience at venues ranging from schools to assisted living facilities. More than once, at this course or that, he has held his colleagues in the maintenance shed in thrall.

Not all of Conrad’s co-stars have equal standing. His primary sidekick is a puppet named Shank — as in the golf shot. If Conrad’s plans pan out, someday a course will hire him to show up on property with Shank and let the puppet serve as a starter or a marshal.

Puppets don’t chase geese. But maybe they can get golfers moving along.