Travels with Terry

Globetrotting consulting agronomist Terry Buchen visits many golf courses annually with his digital camera in-hand. He will share helpful ideas relating to maintenance equipment from the golf course superintendents he visits – as well as a few ideas of his own – with timely photos and captions that explore the changing world of golf course management.

A dedicated greens roller is useful for increasing the speed of aputting surface and smoothing out ball roll. Using walk-behind models has its advantages over riding models because they’re easier to use on significantly contoured greens. Moving along the contours better, they cause less damage and can be turned around much easier when bunker surrounds are close to the putting surface.

The walk-behind greens roller (at right) began as a 1949 Toro Series IV greens mower that was significantly modified by David Kimmelman, a former equipment mechanic who envisioned, designed and constructed the greens rollers. The bed bar and reel were removed, and a large stock front roller from a Toro GM3 roller kit was installed with greaseable bearings and seals where the reel used to be mounted. To add more weight, a ¾-inch-thick steel plate (weighing about 110 pounds) was placed on the frame, replacing the sheet metal the motor was formerly sitting on. A metal rack was built in-house to hold the 4-inch-by-18-inch-by-¾-inch weight bars. The weight can be adjusted by using one to four bars at a time. Each bar weighs about 20 pounds. The mower alone weighs about 225 pounds, and by adding four weight bars, it weighs 305 pounds.

Tom Walker, golf course manager at The Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, uses five dedicated greens rollers, including the one pictured, in his routine maintenance regimen to help improve playing conditions for his members and their guests.

As soon as maintenance equipment usage is done for the day, and then after it’s refueled, thoroughly cleaned and parked in its designated space, the engine compartment is raised to the open position. This helps remind the maintenance employees to check all the fluid levels prior to the next usage.

Examples include: raising hoods to expose the engines on the riding green, tee, fairway and rough mowers; raising the dump bodies on the turf trucksters; raising the seats on the gasoline and electric turf vehicles, etc. This simple, but highly effective procedure, helps perform a pre-engine startup check of the fluid levels – engine oil, radiator, battery water, power steering, hydraulic fluid – as directed by the golf course manager and equipment technician before they’re used.

The procedure has been in use for the past seven years at Golf und Country Club Seddiner See in Wildenbruch, Germany, and no equipment failures have occurred from lack of fluids. The procedure encourages the maintenance staff to take ownership and better care of the maintenance equipment.

David Duke, MG, course manager at the Golf und Country Club Seddiner See is pleased with the pride his employees have taken in this procedure, which has helped improve the reliability of the maintenance equipment and reduce equipment-repair costs. GCN