The golf course was ready for a change, and I’m ready for a change. Today is the last piece of equipment I may show for a bit. The golf course’s change is that it now a few holes have been planted with grass – it has been a long wet summer.
The above picture is of a sprigger. Underneath is a roller and small disc – it smoothes the soil and cuts in the sprigs. Sprigs are small chopped up pieces of grass – in our case Bermuda. It is planted vegetatively as it is a hybrid without seeds. It grows laterally and should root in a week or two and will spread like wildfire in our current conditions. The above portion is somewhat obvious – a cage where the crew feeds the sprigs in the hopper and hand tops small hard to get areas.
I should explain that I am a little more excited about the all the details of this project because of how much we’ve done in-house with a modest hard working team. Don Mahaffey has run the project exceptionally well and the results are really starting to show our efforts.
As for the equipment some was furnished by our sub-contracts, some owned and we’ve rented the rest. We have been most selective with our equipment rentals from a cost perspective. Any equipment on site gets used. So I’ve been a lot more aware of what we have on site and it has been more meaningful as a result.
The above picture is of our sand pros – our finishing tools. There is a blade in front and a rake in back. The blade makes tiny cuts and fills while the rake smoothes everything out. It is quite enjoyable - reminds me of raking a zen garden, and many say their favorite part of construction. For us we'vs spent a lot of time shaping prior to the finishing stages, so it has really just been some minor details and tweaks and fixing some erosion - mostly on the greens.
After construction these machines are used to mechanically rake bunkers on most courses. Fortunately our bunkers are too deep, steep and small for these buggers to get in – so they won’t get much use in the bunkers when we are done.
Back to pictures of our site equipment – this is an excavator, of which we’ve had several on site. It is most versatile. It has been used to shape features, load materials, dig sand, clear trees, build bridges, compact fairways and dig trenches – as in this case for our high power lines. It is most impressive to see someone use the bucket as an appendage to bridge across a span. It handles a large tree like breaking and flinging a small twig, yet with a skilled hand, it looks like they could play a cello. We've had some pretty big buckets on site - a couple tons per scoop. They require significant maintenance, especially when clearing - the operator can more than just operate.
My favorite aspect of the third is how the sight line is a perfect line of charm for the player standing on the tee and the green looks like it sits lightly on top of two bunker complexes - at the first landing zone and surrounding the green in the above picture. The long route to the hole looks like a recurve bow, while the direct route is the string which can be made in two strokes as there is a bit of a help from the prevailing wind.
What a great week for golf in Mexico. There was a great deal of interest in golf this week from the country that borders my home state -- and as can be seen from the above web traffic map there was also great interest for this blog. I hope the game will prosper and grow -- it is a goal of mine to work in Mexico one day soon.
This week was the first ever Women’s British Open contested on The Old Course at St. Andrews. The pictures of all the players on the Swilcan Bridge and in front of the R&A Clubhouse were really great to see, and the following is one of my favorite quotes from the week - "The greens are very strange".
It is an awesome golf course –- I’ve been fortunate to have played there with my father –- both forwards and backwards.
Hoping to capitalize on the increased volume of web searchers regarding the recent purchase of The Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch… :)
In Today’s Wall Street Journal Infiniti has run a half page ad, pg. A3, featuring me as an owner of one of their vehicles. I submitted and suggested a photo of my car on site – I have driven it into a few strange places - I guess they liked their very polished version. Maybe I’ll show one when the site equipment series continues next week - actually I think this might be picture enough.
It was really cool to also have the WSJ’s artist create my stipple portrait. It is the image at right under “about me”.
From the Infiniti website: Innovation. Ingenuity. Inspiration. Infiniti is proud to present some of today’s forward thinkers -- and their Infiniti vehicles.
Depending on soils there are two ways to get small, lateral irrigation pipe in the ground. [laterals are the runs of pipe from the main line that connect to the head – see as-built] Vibratory plow is one method - open trenching is the other. The above picture is a trencher, and how our pipes were installed. It works like a giant chain saw and leaves a trench deep enough and just wide enough to lay the pipe and have room to route the wire and make the connections. It disturbs little material – is easy to put back – and requires proper compaction to eliminate small little impressions across all the fairways. If you have enough time it will compact in the rain.
The golf course was ready for a change, and I’m ready for a change. Today is the last piece of equipment I may show for a bit. The golf course’s change is that it now a few holes have been planted with grass – it has been a long wet summer.
