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With Tier 4 restrictions in place, some superintendents have had to put heavy work into finding the right equipment that meets guidelines and gets the job done. But Ron Cressy, superintendent at Sunrise Country Club in Rancho Mirage, Calif., is not one to panic.
“I don’t really need to worry about it too much,” says Cressy. “I don’t have that many big horsepower diesel motors. We can fit into that Tier 4 no problem.”
Part of the reason he’s not concerned is he keeps his fleet small and mobile. Staying small manages Tier 4 worries, but he still has to be able to run equipment that can manage the work. Right now he only has one tractor-mounted cutting unit, an MH5 hydraulic mower.
“We got it on our new lease program. I needed something for the roughs that was going to be strong and get through them in the summer, and clear through the Bermuda, which is a pretty tough grass,” says Cressy.
With a tractor-mounted cutting unit, he was able to co-opt the power of the tractor for mowing while staying clear of regulation. And the tractor affords the unit with plenty of power to go up against the turf. “With all that horsepower, it’s awesome for when we overseed the course,” he says. “It just takes the turf down to the nubs, to about an eighth, quarter of an inch in no time at all. It just goes right through it as fast as the tractor will go.”
He runs into a little trouble because the tractor can sometimes knock down the grass in front before the unit cuts through, but it still cuts through the roughs without trouble, he says. Although he runs rotary mowers for the rest of his fleet, he relies on the tractor-mounted equipment to take on a good deal of the heavy lifting.
His crew learned to use it with a little training, and to help them get used to making wider turns between mowing lines. But after a little practice with the gang-style mower, it became a regular part of their maintenance cut.
“I have rotary mowers out there now,” says Cressy. “But just to get through all the roughs we need a little help. We just went over what to do with it, how to hook it up and set it, and they’ve done a good job with it.”
Tier 4 restrictions still aren’t that large of an issue among area superintendents – they “talk about it all the time at our meetings, but I don’t know a lot of guys who are too concerned about it,” says Cressy. But being able to keep the fleet within those rules and still take care of roughs efficiently is an attractive feature.
“You’ve got the ability to mow grass down like a madman, or use it for scalping,” says Cressy. “I think once word gets around out here in the desert, I think a lot more people are going to start picking them up, especially for overseeding.”
