How long does your grounds crew take to cut/roll greens?

[ZettyMcGoo]

I am a little upset with my course so I want to see some opinions because maybe I'm the one in the wrong. 

 

My courses first tee time is at 7 am. I dont play exceptionally fast and usually go out with a few buddies. 1:30 9 or 3 hour 18 seem like reasonable expectations to me. People want to go out early and play decently fast so they can get on with their day.  I work at 10:30 most days so if I can play in 3 hours I can make work no problem. The problem is that we will catch the grounds crew by hole 8 every single day.  They say they start at 5 am so I have no clue how we'd catch them that fast. This leads to 3:30-4+ hour rounds. 

 

I used to work grounds crew at a different course that was in just as good of shape if not better. We started at 6am and if we ever got caught it would be by hole 16-18. We cut greens, changed holes, rolled, raked bunkers, and cut collars. 

 

Am I being unreasonable in thinking that I shouldn't be catching the grounds crew by 8:15 for a 7:00 am tee time?

[ThinkingPlus]

Paging @BNGL...

[caniac6]

Do they walk mow or triplex? How many guys do they have? If they start at 5, I'm very surprised you catch them at all. With 2 triplex mowers, both leapfrogging on the front, they should be on the back by the time you start. 

[BNGL]

3 hours ago, ZettyMcGoo said:

I am a little upset with my course so I want to see some opinions because maybe I'm the one in the wrong. 

 

My courses first tee time is at 7 am. I dont play exceptionally fast and usually go out with a few buddies. 1:30 9 or 3 hour 18 seem like reasonable expectations to me. People want to go out early and play decently fast so they can get on with their day.  I work at 10:30 most days so if I can play in 3 hours I can make work no problem. The problem is that we will catch the grounds crew by hole 8 every single day.  They say they start at 5 am so I have no clue how we'd catch them that fast. This leads to 3:30-4+ hour rounds. 

 

I used to work grounds crew at a different course that was in just as good of shape if not better. We started at 6am and if we ever got caught it would be by hole 16-18. We cut greens, changed holes, rolled, raked bunkers, and cut collars. 

 

Am I being unreasonable in thinking that I shouldn't be catching the grounds crew by 8:15 for a 7:00 am tee time?

Something isn't right with what you have written in the first three paragraphs OR there are serious staffing problems/mismanagement at this facility in my opinion.

As for your last sentence it depends on the time the crew starts, later on in my career I made it a point to make sure that no singles went out first, that each and every one was paired up. 

[ZettyMcGoo]

41 minutes ago, caniac6 said:

Do they walk mow or triplex? How many guys do they have? If they start at 5, I'm very surprised you catch them at all. With 2 triplex mowers, both leapfrogging on the front, they should be on the back by the time you start. 

They walk. I know for sure they have at least 2 walking, maybe 3 or 4. The course I worked at we would both walk and leapfrog each other. 9 greens each plus putting green. Two and a half hour job max.

 

that might actually be the problem because I noticed they have 2 cutting the same green. So they both have to unload and get setup 18 times rather than 9. That still shouldn’t take that much time though.

[ZettyMcGoo]

10 minutes ago, BNGL said:

Something isn't right with what you have written in the first three paragraphs OR there are serious staffing problems/mismanagement at this facility in my opinion.

As for your last sentence it depends on the time the crew starts, later on in my career I made it a point to make sure that no singles went out first, that each and every one was paired up. 

 

Im gonna lean on mismanagement because i am not exaggerating anything and I know for a fact they are well staffed. I do agree that singles going out early could be part of the problem. And they start at 5 so even if it takes them 2 hours to cut 9 holes, the first tee time would just be heading out.

 

[caniac6]

2 hours ago, BNGL said:

Something isn't right with what you have written in the first three paragraphs OR there are serious staffing problems/mismanagement at this facility in my opinion.

As for your last sentence it depends on the time the crew starts, later on in my career I made it a point to make sure that no singles went out first, that each and every one was paired up. 

I used to play as a single walker quite often. I would go off the back for a quick 9. If I ran into a guy mowing, I'd just wait. I would stay behind, and putt or hit a few chip shots to give the mower a bit of a head start. I never interfered with a guy mowing. They always had priority.

[mallrat]

First off, and go ahead and flame me, a 1st group that plays in 3 hours should never be the 1st group out again. Remember, we prepare the course for all golfers (300 a day) not just the 1st group. Also you do not want to sacrifice the course to make a 1st group happy. I’m not trying to put you down or anything just giving you the point of view of an Asst. Super. 
 

We have a lot of greens, they average about 8,500 - 9,000 sq ft. Tri-plex, slow is 4 to 4:15 and fast is 3.5 hrs. Rolling greens about the same. Now watering is a completely different story. Granted we only have to water for 3-4 months but that’s anywhere from 3 -5 hours for 2 people. 
 

Remember we want to be out of your way as bad as you want us out of your way. But things happen also. Sunday our  greens mower hit something taking a short cut and knocked reel out of height and had to go in and swap it out. Monday I had to call our mower back 3 holes because he had 2 skips. 🤷‍♂️ Sometimes things are out of our hands. 

[landolakes]

They are on a 6hr 45 min cutting pace— if they start at 5... that seems like a problem- not your pace

[ZettyMcGoo]

On 6/2/2021 at 8:42 PM, mallrat said:

First off, and go ahead and flame me, a 1st group that plays in 3 hours should never be the 1st group out again. Remember, we prepare the course for all golfers (300 a day) not just the 1st group. Also you do not want to sacrifice the course to make a 1st group happy. I’m not trying to put you down or anything just giving you the point of view of an Asst. Super. 
 

We have a lot of greens, they average about 8,500 - 9,000 sq ft. Tri-plex, slow is 4 to 4:15 and fast is 3.5 hrs. Rolling greens about the same. Now watering is a completely different story. Granted we only have to water for 3-4 months but that’s anywhere from 3 -5 hours for 2 people. 
 

Remember we want to be out of your way as bad as you want us out of your way. But things happen also. Sunday our  greens mower hit something taking a short cut and knocked reel out of height and had to go in and swap it out. Monday I had to call our mower back 3 holes because he had 2 skips. 🤷‍♂️ Sometimes things are out of our hands. 

Very reasonable explanation from your point of view, thanks!

[me05501]

On 6/2/2021 at 10:42 PM, mallrat said:

First off, and go ahead and flame me, a 1st group that plays in 3 hours should never be the 1st group out again. Remember, we prepare the course for all golfers (300 a day) not just the 1st group. Also you do not want to sacrifice the course to make a 1st group happy. I’m not trying to put you down or anything just giving you the point of view of an Asst. Super. 
 

We have a lot of greens, they average about 8,500 - 9,000 sq ft. Tri-plex, slow is 4 to 4:15 and fast is 3.5 hrs. Rolling greens about the same. Now watering is a completely different story. Granted we only have to water for 3-4 months but that’s anywhere from 3 -5 hours for 2 people. 
 

Remember we want to be out of your way as bad as you want us out of your way. But things happen also. Sunday our  greens mower hit something taking a short cut and knocked reel out of height and had to go in and swap it out. Monday I had to call our mower back 3 holes because he had 2 skips. 🤷‍♂️ Sometimes things are out of our hands. 

 

This makes total sense to me. 

 

I think the expectation to be able to get in 18 holes and still make it to work by 10:30am is the most unrealistic one in this situation. It's cool if that can happen sometimes, but if I was the super I'd probably not adjust my manpower around unrealistic expectations. 

[TMadigolf]

On 5/30/2021 at 2:52 PM, ZettyMcGoo said:

They walk. I know for sure they have at least 2 walking, maybe 3 or 4. The course I worked at we would both walk and leapfrog each other. 9 greens each plus putting green. Two and a half hour job max.

 

that might actually be the problem because I noticed they have 2 cutting the same green. So they both have to unload and get setup 18 times rather than 9. That still shouldn’t take that much time though.

How small were the greens that you could walk mow 9 or 10 greens in 2 and a half hours? We send 5 mowers on routes, 3 on trailers and 2 close to the shop routes on foot. 2 of the trailer routes mow 5 greens a piece,  those take between 2 and 2 and a half hours. Our greens average around 4-5000 sq ft. While i think your pace is a bit fast for 1st off in the morning they should be sending more than 2 guys paired up to mow greens if it's taking that long. Splitting a 5000 sq ft green should take 10-15 at most

[mallrat]

I need to apologize as our greens our closer to 5k sq ft on average. I was thinking in terms of spraying greens and collections. 
 

We send 3 walk mowers and it’s about 4 1/2 hrs. That includes a shared green that is about 22 - 24k sq ft. 

[lefthack]

Greg is usually mowing the fringe when I am playing (6:30 today), but he starts at 9 and works backwards. We passed on 6 today.