Having battled to the top in a man's world, Torrey Pines South course superintendent Candice Combs is on the verge of making history

	Torrey Pines Superintendent Candice Combs. Robert Beck/SI

By Jeff Silverman

Dawn arrives at Torrey Pines the way it does at all golf courses, but given Torrey's perch above the Pacific on the cliffs of La Jolla, Calif., first light can be even more serene. Candice Combs, the superintendent of Torrey's marquee South course, especially enjoys watching the moon set over the ocean, though there's no moon to see this morning, not with the thick winter fog rolling in, and no time for reverie: The Buick Invitational looms, and, in the distance, the 2008 U.S. Open approaches.

There's much to do. The new kikuyu-grass fairways need tending, as do the greens, which are completing the delicate transition from troublesome bentgrass to poa. Then there's the aerating, top-dressing, sodding, fertilizing, irrigating, supervising ... enough tasks to make a man tired. And isn't maintaining a golf course a man's job? "I can't think about that," says Combs, 53, the divorced mother of two who has been the South's super for the past year. "My focus is elsewhere."

Still, as she begins another day on the job, Combs admits that her entry more than 30 years ago into a universe without a Y chromosome made her an anomaly in a profession that has skewed almost exclusively male since Old Tom Morris invented the job. And she knows that no woman has ever been the superintendent of the course that hosts the U.S. Open.

"She's probably the most prestigious woman in the industry right now," says Carmen Magro, a former course superintendent who is head of the turfgrass program at Penn State, one of the foremost training grounds for supers in the U.S. "If she has a successful Open," he says, "that will be huge for women in this industry. It will absolutely open doors." And that -- breaking golf's grass ceiling -- makes Combs proud. "That means something to me," she says. "Hopefully, I'm going to give one for the team." Of the roughly 10,500 superintendents and 5,500 assistants who belong to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, only 79 supers and 72 assistants are women. Of the 2,000 members who have reached the association's highest level of certification, women -- Combs among them -- make up barely 1%.

"We're few and far between," says 27-year-old Patty Reedy, who was recently elevated from assistant to head super on the South course at Los Angeles Country Club, making her one of only 16 women supers at private clubs. The lack of numbers isn't surprising. The job entails exhausting physical labor and grueling hours and is complicated by nature's whims and golfers' demands. "This is no place for suits and high heels," says Andrea Bakalyar, 34, super at the Wee course at Williams Creek in Knoxville, Tenn. "It's not for everybody. It's not an easy career."