Tournament Experiences

I just finished my second opportunity this week to experience golf course maintenance being performed at some of the highest levels.  I completed 5 evenings of mowing fairways at the Price Cutter Charity Classic on the Web.com tour, held at Highland Springs Country Club.  I thank Derek Wilkerson, CGCS, the superintendent at Highland Springs for giving me the opportunity.  I was able to hear discussions on how they kept the moisture in the greens during tournament week, I got to see the detailed work that included, hand watering of greens, raking bunkers specially for tournament play, filling of divots, setting up the course, blowing of clippings, many things we do not do at our facility.  Of course some of it is resources and how we prioritize them, but I do think the work that we do regularly on our course could use a little detailed improvement.  Despite a poor weekend weather forecast that caused plans to be changed on the fly, (which poor weather never materialized, just some light rain for the middle of the final round), it was amazing to see how the standard of course setup was not compromised due to that forecast.  Contingency plans were made, so they were prepared for the worst, but thankfully those plans were not needed.

                  

On the left is one of the tour trucks down at the maintenance area. In the middle is the 10th tee as I headed out to start mowing back nine fairways during the Tuesday evening practice rounds.  On the right as I was mowing down 11 fairway.  I was pretty proud of that mow line, although not every stripe was as good as that.  We were not cutting much grass, (although I could see the clippings pretty well), I found the shadows from the trees and the angle of the setting sun made some passes more difficult.  

                  

As these pictures from Wednesday evening after the Pro-Am finished show, mowing later in the evening was a little tougher.  The picture on the right shows the lights on the cart that was blowing behind me a couple of hundred yards away.

                

 This was the set up for Thursday and Friday evenings, (and Saturday as well). Equipment was staged with the slowest pieces to head out first.  The maintenance building is down by the eighth hole, Derek would be up at 8 tee, and call for us to start engines, the group in the fairway would have played their second shots or third shots into this par 5 hole, and the group on the tee would have hit their drives, at that point we would all head up the maintenance road toward 8 tee and into the subdivision going toward the entry road.  Once there, we would hold until players on the par 3 4th hole had teed off and we then headed down the entry road, those going to # 1 would go down the outbound side, we going to # 10 would head down the inbound road.  Work could start on # 1, but they couldn't cross the road to # 2 until play had moved onto # 5.  They would have to keep that distance behind play, and we could start mowing on # 10 and then to # 11.  Since going to # 12 would take us behind # 9 and # 18 greens, we would drive out through a vacant lot to proceed down to 13/14, depending on the job we were doing, some could work their way back to # 12, they had me move onto 14.  13 was a par 3 so no fairway, # 12 was mowed after # 9.  On Saturday with the early finish, I did go to # 12 after # 11.  I was just amazed at the orchestration that occurred to move us into position to maintain the course while avoiding golfers.

I took the chance to ask a lot of questions, especially of their mechanic, he would meet me on the course once a day to check the reel to bedknife setup and since I had a demo machine, he would check on its operation.  I really liked this mower, and will definitely look to demo it at our course.  
 

                   

 Also It must be said, that many thanks are passed on to our distributers who provided food for the crew.  BWI, GreensPro, Turf Professional Products, and Van Wall Equipment all provided food.  All in all, it was a great experience and I look forward to doing this again.

               

As always, Thanks for reading!

Mel