Paul Grayson
Paul Grayson is the equipment manager at Crown Golf Club in Traverse City, Mich.
Recent Articles
The full fall treatment
From greens mowers to hand-held trimmers and everything in between, there’s a laundry list of equipment to prep for the offseason.
The Full Fall Treatment
From greens mowers to hand-held trimmers and everything in between, there’s a laundry list of equipment to prep for the offseason.
The circle of life
It is all part of the circle of (equipment’s) life (play “The Lion King” theme song as background here). To maintain the efficient operation of the golf course as a business, old equipment needs to be rotated out of the lineup and new equipment purchased to replace it. If equipment managers before you did not do this, your turf equipment would be horse drawn or steam powered. Now that you are your course’s equipment manager, it is up to you to continue the tradition of weeding your motor pool collection each year. Machines that have become uneconomical to keep need culled from the herd.
The goose that lays golden eggs
The beverage cart pays for itself in the first month, and each month after that is pure profit, says GCI equipment columnist Paul Grayson. He discusses the supporting role this important piece of equipment plays in a succesful golf course.
Best practices
Heading into the fall season, here are a few best practices I’ve observed and adopted along the way. Now is as good of a time as any to share them with you as you prepare to either put your equipment to bed for the season, or to kick start your equipment maintenance program for the months to come.
By the numbers
Shortly after I started at Crown Golf Club a heated argument ignited among returning mower operators in cold storage – the shop’s unheated indoor storage area subject to freezing in cold weather. Each operator was complaining the other guy was blocking their way and to get their mower out in the morning the other had to move. Unfortunately, the suggested relocation was in the way of someone else’s mower.
Water! Water! Water everywhere!
While it is not exactly a desert, there is a place in Traverse City where storms split, go around and reform on the other side. This place of unusual weather is the result of geography and is exactly where the Crown Golf Club was inadvertently located. There can be a raging rainstorm going on in the area and frequently we have to run the irrigation system because the storm went around us. A failure of the irrigation system, even for a short time, can damage the golf course. The course is truly dependent on irrigation.
Stage Fright
Here is a frontline story about the panic high-tech mowers cause. This is relevant because turf equipment is adopting the X-By-Wire design approach, and some of it is old enough to need serious troubleshooting and repairs.