Robots on desert bentgrass

Luddites, beware: This future isn’t coming. It’s here.

Echoing (for bitter or better) the automation of all domestic manner of industry, agriculture, food service, commerce, media and entertainment, the golf world is growing and mowing increasingly robotic.

To wit: At the PGA Tour’s debut Black Desert Championship held at the eponymous resort in Ivins, Utah, the course and golfers weren’t the only things breaking maiden. Rather, the fresh event further represented the first use of autonomous mowers at a PGA Tour stop.

The fleet of four all-electric, 100-inch wide, 5-gang reel AMPs (Autonomous Mowing Platforms) came compliments of Salt Lake City-based FireFly Automatix.

Black Desert superintendent Ken Yates got the idea of using the AMPs during a course demo day seven months before the tournament. In concert with Yates’ purview, all involved parties saw how using robots played into the narrative of a debut event and the PGA Tour’s first Utah-based tournament in more than six decades.

Perfect plot aside, the concept still came with some initial skepticism.

“With anything new, you still don’t know exactly how it’s going to work, so I still had to have a backup plan,” Yates says. “I still had to have fairway mowers to make the tournament work properly.”

At first blush, autonomy came via a sprinkle of anxiety.

“There was a little bit of stress, but (FireFly) came out here six weeks ahead of time,” Yates adds, “and once they started mowing and mapping — and they did have to remap a couple times, because the first time they didn’t do it with the (gallery) ropes up — but by the time we were two weeks out, I was, like, ‘Yeah — they got this.’ And I wasn’t worried about it at all anymore.”

During the tourney window, Yates had robots mowing Black Desert’s bentgrass fairways from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.

“They performed very well, and the quality of cut was right on; couldn’t have asked for anything better,” he says. “And the Tour’s agronomy team, they were like me: a little apprehensive at first because, of course, they’d never done it before either. And they did tell me to make sure I had that backup plan. Then they came out the week before the tournament to see them, and, like me, they felt comfortable with them pretty fast.”

As both the superintendent and PGA Tour enjoyed robot performance, the AMP’s father firm achieved edification through application.

“The group from FireFly came out with all their own people and all that, because this is something they hadn’t done before either,” Yates says. “To do something on this scale was all new for them, too. And they were getting a lot of valuable information from this. One of their reps told me that they got six months’ worth of data from two weeks’ time out here. All the practical use, improvements, … the data they got out here was incredible and will help make their products even better.”

Rather than finding intimidation in agronomy’s tech advance, Yates sees the robots as merely another tool in the shed.

“I’m pretty open to it,” he says while partially joking that equipment managers will soon basically become IT workers. “I mean, I’ve been doing this job for over 30 years, and been working in golf since 1989. Just look back over that time at how we run irrigation systems and sprayers now with automation. Things change and evolve. The mowers, it’s just a new thing, a new tool, a new technology. The practices remain the same, it’s just that they’re not being done in the exact same way.”

As for the turf being tended at Black Desert? That too proves a unicorn, as the course, which debuted in 2023, is one of two facilities in southern Utah playing on bentgrass fairways and greens.

“I knew that this (turf) would work out well, because of the low humidity and because of the variety of bentgrass,” Yates says. “I’m using Dominator on the fairways and 007XL on the greens. These, of course, are the new ‘Superbents.’ And, I mean, the bents that I used back in the ’90s, they wouldn’t have lived in this environment. These Superbents, they remind me a lot of Bermudagrass at times, just how hearty they are. You can beat them up a little bit, and they like it. They recuperate so quickly.”

Grass aside, Yates refutes the Man vs. Machine idea that enhanced automated inclusion in golf will take over — or take away — jobs from human staff. Inversely, he firmly believes that robots afford grounds’ teams to be freed up for all manner of more finite tasks.

“You keep the same staff and then use the robots as an extra tool. It allows your team for the more detailed work,” Yates says. “We all have those jobs in the back of our heads that we’ll get to when there’s time to do it. But, with this stuff, we’re getting to those jobs faster.

“During the tournament, my guys never touched a fairway mower, so there was more time to be spent in bunkers, detail work. We would have gotten to that stuff anyway, but now we were freed up with more time to get to it right away.”

Judd Spicer is a Palm Desert, California-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.

Tartan Talks 102

Chad Goetz lives in Florida. He has a major project in Arizona beginning this spring.

He’s now helping design courses to be played on screens.

Goetz’s 25-year career as a golf course architect easily surpasses anything he envisioned when learning the game in Warrensburg, Missouri, a small college town in the middle of the state.

“It’s worked out really well,” Goetz says on the Tartan Talks podcast appearance. “What I really love about it is that no project is the same. Every piece of land, every golf course, every client, every superintendent is different. Every project requires a different approach. That always keeps it fresh.”

The diversity of work Goetz executes as a senior design associate at Nicklaus Design makes for fascinating Tartan Talks dialogue. The conversation begins with Goetz describing the upcoming work at Desert Highlands in Scottsdale, Arizona. At the end of the podcast, Goetz describes his role in creating a futuristic golf course.

The episode is available on the Superintendent Radio Network page of popular distribution platforms. 

Celebrate with us in San Diego

Golf Course Industry and The Aquatrols Company are honoring winners of the 14th annual Super Social Media Awards as part of the 2025 Social Media Celebration beginning at 2:30 p.m. PT, Wednesday, Feb. 5, at GCSAA Conference and Trade Show booth #4025 inside the San Diego Convention Center. Drinks will be served during the event, with a happy hour and live music immediately following the celebration. Hosted by Golf Course Industry managing editor Matt LaWell, a veteran trivia game presenter in his spare time, the gathering provides a fabulous opportunity to reconnect with industry friends or meet peers you might recognize from your social media feeds. The event is free, open to all and requires no RSVP.