AT MOUNT JULIET, "the trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry". Yeats, who was writing about Coole, would have been impressed.

The air is crisp. Rustling sounds can be heard throughout this unspoilt country estate - pheasants, foxes, rabbits, squirrels. There are golfers out on the fairways too - putting, driving, striding to the next hole.

Aidan O'Hara looks out at it all with a contented smile.

"It's a great job," he says. "It's so diverse. It's outdoors and you can go indoors if you want to. You're your own boss on a day-to-day basis."

As golf course superintendent at Mount Juliet Golf and Country Club in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, he is ruler of all he surveys.

He describes his job by listing each area that a golf course superintendent must supervise, manage and developing the putting greens, tees, fairways, roughs and bunkers. He must oversee the efficient operation of an equipment service-and-repair shop, and he is responsible for the preparation and presentation of the annual golf-course maintenance budget.

There are other duties too. "You have to be a mechanic," he says. "You have to be a plumber, and a personnel manager, and an accountant, and an environmentalist, and a farmer - you have to be a weatherman and a bit of gardener and an arbourist too, all rolled into one.

"Oh, and you have to be a diplomat and a politician sometimes too."

All through school, Aidan O'Hara wanted to be a greenkeeper. His father was a greenkeeper, and during the holidays each year he helped his father on a golf course in Galway. In the 1970s, such a career was frowned upon, his ambitions were nob encouraged either at home or school.

"I was strongly advised to go and get myself a good third-level education," he says.

Views have changed since then especially in the past five years "with the more prestigious, commercial ventures that have arrived on the scene," he says. "It's brought the whole subject of golf-course management to the fore."

In the last 10 to 15 years, he has seen long-held traditions change and the job of greenkeeper change substantially. Today it is viewed as a career. Even the term "head greenkeeper" is a thing of the past, he says. Today the job of the "golf course superintendent" is highly skilled and highly regarded.

But it was in spite of all the advice that O'Hara went to work at Galway Golf Club after his Leaving Cert at Gormanston College. In 1982 he was among the first group to study at the National Botanic Gardens for a City and Guilds certificate in greenkeeping and sports-turf management. He got first place in the these islands on examination and was awarded the London Institute's silver medal.

"That really put me on the road," he says. There were 18 students on that first two-year course. "We were all experienced. We had all been working on golf courses for many years. It's the experience that counts."

In 1985 he became head greenkeeper at Elm Park Golf and Sports Club in Dublin, where he worked for five years. Alongside his work, he continued to study. He was awarded a certificate in greenkeeping supervision and management by Elmwood Agricultural and Technical College in Fife, Scotland, in 1988.

He moved to Mount Juliet in 1989, before the rest of us had even heard of it. His first duty was to supervise of the construction of the Jack Nicklaus-designed course and the three-hole teaching academy. He spent five weeks in Columbus, Ohio, in 1990 on an intensive training course. The overall approach of the Americans - their equipment, organisation and professionalism - made a deep impression on him.

"Things have changed so fast now." Mount Juliet, which is playable all year round because of an extensive irrigation and drainage system, has set an example which many newer clubs have followed. In each of the last five years he has studied in the US, in places like Las Vegas, New Orleans, Dallas, Anaheim, San Francisco and Orlando, gaining further qualifications from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. The courses have covered topics varying from irrigation and soil science to budgeting and practical mathematics.