Maintaining two of the most beautiful, picturesque courses in America may seem like a dream job to anyone who’s ever picked up a golf club, but with great responsibility comes a lot of hard work.
“These are demanding courses, from both a playing and a maintenance aspect,” said superintendent Chris Dalhamer, CGCS, of Pebble Beach Golf Links, host of four U.S. Open Championships and the top-rated public course in the country. “We run a pretty rigorous tournament schedule and the expectations of everyone who plays here is to see championship-caliber conditions, day in and day out, no exceptions.”
He and fellow golf course superintendent Robert Yeo, of Spyglass Hill Golf Course, have a constant spotlight focused on their facilities, and each is responsible for making sure their courses live up to their expectations.
“We do a lot of detail work to keep everything from tee to green tournament-ready throughout most of the year,” Yeo said of Spyglass, which is consistently rated as one of the toughest courses in the United States. “It provides a challenge to the best golfers in the world, and earning that sort of a distinction starts with the course conditions.”
Together, Dalhamer and Yeo host more than 20 tournaments each year, including the PGA Tour’s annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, the Callaway Golf Pebble Beach Invitational, PGA Champions Tour events, the Wal-Mart First Tee Open and several others.
To help keep these courses in top shape for all of the national exposure, Pebble Beach Company, which operates Pebble Beach Golf Links, Spyglass Hill and two other 18-hole courses at Pebble Beach Resorts in Monterey County, California, recently signed an extension to an existing agreement with Jacobsen, a Textron company, making Jacobsen the company’s official supplier of turf care maintenance equipment for another five years.
As part of the renewed agreement, Pebble Beach Company received a shipment of two Jacobsen Eclipse 122 walking greens mowers in January 2008 to rotate through their various properties. After just a few months of use, both Dalhamer and Yeo are impressed with the Eclipse’s flexibility, the mower’s consistency and its impeccable quality-of-cut.
“We had the Eclipse on Spyglass Hill right before the AT&T for tournament preparation and support,” Yeo said. “We really liked the quality-of-cut and were very pleased with the mower overall. It did a great job in helping us get our greens ready for a tournament with some of the finest golfers in the world.”
“The ability to adapt the Eclipse to fit the course conditions is by far its greatest strength,” Dalhamer said. “You can adjust the placement of the battery with the all-electric set up to get a more or less aggressive cut depending on what you’re going for. That combined with the ability to set the clip rate independently from the walking speed has been a really big advantage for us, especially with 100 percent Poa greens.”
The courses at Pebble Beach Resorts have absolutely no down time, and are open as close to 365 days a year as possible. As the seasons change, so do the maintenance needs of each individual course and each Poa annua green.
“The conditions at any course are going to be unique in the spring, summer, fall and winter,” Dalhamer explained. “The Eclipse allows you to continually take inventory of what your greens need so you can set the mower to give you the cut you want for the best quality each day. Having that independent clip rate and the ability to dial it in to your particular course is huge.”
Another major challenge for both Dalhamer and Yeo, aside from the ongoing attention from the national golfing community, is to be respectful of the residents who live adjacent to the course. Noise is a significant factor in determining their maintenance schedules, but the quiet, all-electric settings on the Eclipse alleviate a lot of these concerns.
“We don’t have any particular noise ordinances or restrictions to comply with, but we always try to be as sensitive to the people who live on the back nine as we can,” Yeo said. “By having the option to go all-electric with the Eclipse, the quality-of-cut is excellent and the noise and environmental aspects are great for residents, operators, technicians and everybody else involved in the community.”
Being the superintendent of a high-profile course like those at Pebble Beach Resorts is a demanding job, but tools like the new Eclipse from Jacobsen make it a little less hectic for professionals like Chris Dalhamer and Robert Yeo.
“The Eclipse has been great for us here at Pebble Beach,” Dalhamer said. “The flexibility and the ability to adapt to different course conditions from day to day and season to season is very advantageous and has worked out very well for us.”