Clueless Groundskeepers - Share your stories

[inthehole]

 Question ... the few times that I've played golf early in the morning on weekdays, the groundskeepers seem to be oblivious in mowing the fairways and never even look if you're hitting an approach shot.    What's the general consensus ... should the player wait (could be a matter of minutes if the guy really isn't paying attention & is wearing hearing protection -it's very disrupting) or should you just hit away and hope for the best ??

[DaveP043]

19 hours ago, SavvySwede said:

I actually have to pace off all the pin locations when I'm cutting the holes. We use ezLocator software which automatically selects pin positions for us in such a way that you never see the same combinations of pins twice. It also knows how to vary the pins to prevent traffic issues, saving the greens from wear and tear. Still requires some judgement on the part of the groundskeeper but infinitely better than just telling him to stick it somewhere in the front third of the green.

I looked at the website, that's a very cool system.  It looked like for an initial set-up fee of $9500, they come out and do detailed mapping of the greens, so they can define the areas where cups can fairly be located.  The system records historical usage, and varies the locations to equalize wear, and to keep the overall course difficulty relatively consistent from day to day.  

A few years ago our pro and superintendent went to each green and determined about 20 appropriate locations, and sorted them into 20 sets of pin positions, trying to accomplish the same goals.  We get a nice variety of pins that way, and we get a pin sheet in the pro shop before we play each morning.

[boogielicious]

26 minutes ago, inthehole said:

 Question ... the few times that I've played golf early in the morning on weekdays, the groundskeepers seem to be oblivious in mowing the fairways and never even look if you're hitting an approach shot.    What's the general consensus ... should the player wait (could be a matter of minutes if the guy really isn't paying attention & is wearing hearing protection -it's very disrupting) or should you just hit away and hope for the best ??

We had that at one course in the middle of the day! There were others that just stood on the green. What made it worse was they were moving from hole to hole in the same direction as us, so we have them for 5 or 6 holes.

I waited until they were looking, but it was a pain.

[shanksalot]

 The courses I play have guys who are almost always aware of players on the hole they are working on at the time. A few times they get in the way, but for the most part they do a great job and our foursome always talks to them and tells them how much we appreciate their hard work. That being said the one time that I remember having a worker getting in the way was a good thing. I was about 160 out and hit a 6 hybrid and it was a slight pull hook. The worker was in the left green side bunker. The ball was going right at his cart and as I yelled fore it hit the cart, bounced up in the air and landed on the green. When I got there the worker was laughing as my ball ended up about 18" from the pin. We high fived with him as he happened to be one of the guys who is a golfer and has played a few times with us. So sometimes when they do get in the way it turns out to be a good thing.