Working with Mother Nature

Avondale Golf Club contains 117 acres of turfgrass of which 31 acres are tees, fairways and approaches; and 3.0 acres are greens.  This means that there are 83 acres of roughs that contain our signature trees that prevent quick and easy mowing.  So breakdown this problem especially during this time where Mother Nature is warmer than normal thus turf growth is optimum.

On Saturday and Sunday, the half the team comes in for a quick mow and go which includes three greens mowers, one set up person, two bunker team members and a supervisor - or seven of the 14 total team members working on the GCM team.  Since these team members glean no OT they have to have a day off during the week, except the supervisor which means an average 1.2 person reduction during the week.

On Monday, Wednesday & Friday we mow and maintain the tees, approaches, fairways, and practice area all before play has a chance to catch us thus on those days we only have one of the weekend team members off thus leaving the crew size at 13 ... but with keeping in budget one team member must be on vacation almost every week, thus this number of crew is dropped to 12.  In the first four hours of the day we will have three greens mowers, two tee / approach mowers, two bunker guys, one set up person, two fairway mowers, a clipping removal member, one collar mower (also mows nurseries and small tees) and supervisor (usually helping in one form). 

So on M, W, F we get four hours for three rough mowers and two bank mower in best case scenarios.  Not including moving obstacles such as ropes and stakes, signs, etc. a average bank mower can mow 5 ft swath at 3 mph for four hours or 7.3 acres (14.6 acres for two).  A rough unit can mow a 12 foot swath or 13.1 acres (39.3 acres for three units).  Thus this 53.9 acres per day sounds great and makes it appear at first glance that within 2.2 days we should have the roughs mowed.

So why isn't this true that the roughs are mowed perfectly?  Well the numbers above do not count travel time to and from the next area to be mowed; care and cleaning of the machine; is the machine even working (two of our rough units are over 13 years old); moving ropes & stakes and replacing them, cutting around trees and roots, and the best reason - not interfering with the play.  Thus our best case we can mow the roughs in their entirety within 2.6 days or about twice per week.  But I should note that this doesn't include shotguns, ladies events, special events, and all of those things that occur in season.

Right now with the growth being at an average of 0.5 inches per day or 3.5 inches per week quite often we will have to double mow areas since the first pass usually pushes the turf down since it hasn't thicken up thus our current rate of completing the roughs is 1.5 times per week ... this means by the time we have returned to a given area the grass has grown around 1.5 to 2.0 inches.