Technology’s impact on the turf industry is not confined to clubs with mega budgets. Superintendents limited by staffing and budget constraints are utilizing technology to make their operations run more efficiently, thereby saving time, employee hours and dollars.
And water.
Ricardo Torres is the assistant superintendent at Westlake Country Club, a private club in a residential community in Jackson Township, New Jersey, where his mother, Jennifer, is the head superintendent. Moisture meters are kept in the easily accessible section of his tool kit.
“Those are something with use pretty much every day in the growing season to go out and check spots on the greens or the tees,” he says. “Occasionally, we’ll use them on fairways too. It just gives us a pinpoint area where we need to water this spot or maybe this entire green is dry along with this pump area.”
Torres also relies on Spiio soil sensors to provide real-time data on moisture and other issues.
“Those are the sensors we actually place in the ground on the greens,” he says. “They give us the moisture, temperature and salinity data. Syngenta” — which has been collaborating with Spiio since December 2023 — “has also added in weather data for the local area, growing degree day models, and pest trackers for insects and diseases.
“My course uses three or four of them throughout the year. We’ll typically put those on our greens, two or three of them, and what we do with those is mainly use them for their moisture data, but in the spring and fall we’re watching the temperature.”
Torres and his mother handle the bulk of the hand watering at their club. Having the data from the meters at hand lets them know where hand watering is needed and where it isn’t.
“With a million other tasks that we’re both tending to every day, it definitely saves time when we’re going out and checking the greens,” Torres says. “And saying, ‘This one’s dry, we need to water,’ or ‘This one is all right and we don’t have to spend the time here.’”
At Ledges Golf Club, a municipal facility in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in the Connecticut River Valley, superintendent Amanda Fontaine utilizes moisture meters in her digital-driven approach to water usage.
“We can use them with an app, so based on what we see on the app, we can tell where our dry spots are and our wet spots are,” she says. “Last year, we lost our river pump, and we drew directly from the Connecticut River to our pond. Every ounce of water counted because we were paying for it right out of a hydrant to fill our ponds. So, being able to hand-water efficiently saves us time. You’re not watering the whole green by hand; you’re spot watering.
“And money, because you don’t have to pay for all of the water that’s coming out of the hydrant. That way you can keep a consistent playing surface and keep it exactly where you want it to be and not lose water to surrounds or the woods or anywhere else you don’t want it. And instead of sending two or three people out there to hand water for two or three hours, you can send one or two out for an hour to hit everything we need to hit across the golf course.”
Fontaine hosted the Massachusetts Golf Association’s Amateur Public Links Championship last July. In conjunction with that event, the MGA collected data on the golf course and shared it with Fontaine.
“(The MGA) was taking aerial topography readings and reading where our high spots and low spots were for moisture and elevation and everything like that,” Fontaine says. “We were able to get some of that data from them. They solidified what we were doing water-wise. We could see every undulation on the greens, where water would hold and where it wouldn’t. We were able to really key in on slope moisture. Usually, slopes burn up first, but they wanted them to stay firm and fast. That was one of the things we were working toward.”
At Springhaven Country Club in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, a private club located just outside Philadelphia, Charlie Miller is gradually embracing technology.
A Penn State graduate, Miller has spent his entire professional career at Springhaven — 35 years in all, the last 29 of them as the head superintendent.
In the last decade and a half, Miller has become more attuned to technology. During that time, he has installed a computerized irrigation system and he and his staff began using hand-held moisture meters. But, like a baseball manager who relies on more than analytics to evaluate a player, Miller has an “eye test” of his own when evaluating the health of his greens.
“I trust my eyes more than anything else,” he says. “I’m going to be out there with the moisture meter and my eyes I feel like I’m a lot more efficient that way. That might make me old school, but that’s how I do it.”
Miller will soon be taking additional steps into the realm of technology when he adds two GPS sprayers to his arsenal.
“I have ordered them, and we’ll be getting them later this year,” he says. “So, we’re a little behind the curve on moving to that technology, but we did make that commitment. We just haven’t had the opportunity to use it yet, but we are looking forward to that. Not last year but [in 2022-23] we were doing a lot of renovation and we have a lot of tighter areas, a lot more pinch points, a lot of areas that are more difficult to access with sprayers, so the GPS is going to be extremely helpful now with these tighter confines.
“And it’s certainly going to give us a lot more versatility to not overspray the rough around the greens with growth regulators or things like that. We’re really looking forward to that.”
Looking ahead, Miller anticipates utilizing robotic mowers on his driving range at some point, after renovation work is completed.
“We’re a couple years out from taking care of that,” he says. “Maintenance on the range is extremely difficult for me because it’s right on the border of our property [and adjacent housing]. I can’t send equipment up there at 5:30 or 6 a.m. The pro shop staff is out setting the range up at 6:30. The range is open at 7, so I don’t have time for maintenance up there. So, once we redo that I will absolutely pursue a couple of those robots specifically for the driving range.”
Miller is also contemplating adding a drone to monitor the movement of his team around the property.
“Our property is very tight and it’s a very busy golf course,” he says. “It’s hard to get around sometimes without being in the way. We’ve kind of kicked around the idea of having a drone, just to have an eye on the staff a little bit easier.”
Miller got a close-up look at drone technology during the 2022-23 renovation. The golf course remained open and Miller, with the help of greens chair Mike Hodges, could keep his members appraised of what was going on.
“He would often come out in the late afternoon or early evening and take a couple of drone shots,” Miller says. “I would post daily photos [on X] of what was going on, just little snapshots of what the members could expect — ‘We’re working on Hole No. 4, there is a temporary green today,’ or ‘Sand is going in the bunkers tomorrow.’"
Mike Hightower is the superintendent at Westborough Golf Club, a municipally owned facility in Massachusetts. He also owns a company that sells and distributes robotic mowers.
Within the realm of technology, Hightower utilizes automated irrigation controls and GPS sprayers. He’s also considering installing in-ground moisture meters.
For turf professionals with a limited budget looking to take their first steps with autonomous mowers, Hightower suggests starting in the rough. He notes that robotic mowers are especially useful in areas that are difficult to maintain such as rough areas, bunker banks and tee slopes.
Hightower prides himself on the amount of data he collects and analyzes.
“I create a lot of maps when I do my GPS spraying and monitor pest populations based in past applications” he says. “If I have to spray something, I always document it in my computer system so that next year I can come out and utilize that map and make a preventive spray in that area, areas where I’ve had to do curative controls in the past.”
These technological advances are wonderful, but a superintendent must always be cognizant of their bottom line — and their club’s. Paul Robertson offers reassurance in that regard. Robertson is in charge of the turf at Victoria Golf Club, a private club in Victoria, British Columbia, where he is the head superintendent and assistant general manager. The club has been his professional home for 25 years.
“Anything you can measure and quantify, I think you have a fiduciary responsibility to do so,” he says. “When I started, I was putting out six pounds of nitrogen annually, wall to wall. But as fertilizer prices started to increase, in some years going up 20 to 30 percent, I had to find a way to provide a good product without putting out so many fertilizer applications. We started quantifying the effect on organic matter and what do members really see and appreciate? What color green is green enough? It’s through measuring and monitoring, monitoring our green speeds, monitoring our greens and approach areas.”
Robertson now applies 1.3 pounds of nitrogen on his greens each year. He evaluates his fairways on an annual basis.
“I evaluate my soil to determine, ‘How much nitrogen do I have? How far can I cut this back and still provide green grass and optimal playing conditions?’” he says.
Robertson notes the importance of superintendents educating their members so they will understand the reasoning behind their decisions, even if they disagree with them.
“Right now, 30 percent of the members love it firm, fast and less green,” he says. “Thirty percent want it this green and 30 to 40 percent are undecided. I think as superintendents do a better job of explaining the economics and environmental impact, that will change so the undecided will fall into the (more minimalist category).”
Robertson was one of the first superintendents — if not the first — in Canada to utilize robotic mowers on greens. Doing so allowed him to utilize his staff more effectively.
“I think we were the only club in Canada to do it and one of the first clubs in the world,” he says. At a cost of C$600,000 for six mowers, “it just made total economic sense.”
Robertson estimates the move saved him C$50,000 to C$60,000 per year in labor costs, which he reallocated to meet other needs such as bunker work and upgrading course conditions.
“Those robotic mowers mowed and rolled in one pass,” he says. “It eliminated two positions on the golf course, which allowed us to have more of our staff focused on bunkers and improving the quality of that.”
Every turf professional has their own unique needs and challenges to address. Technology won’t necessarily make those challenges go away but can often make them easier to deal with.
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