Five Robotic Greens Mowers Trim a Club's Morning Setup Crew From 11 to 7

A setup window that ran on hand labor

Before the robots arrived, the morning routine at this golf club was built entirely on people and push equipment. Daily course setup took about four hours, and eleven employees carried the work before the first group teed off.

The crew was split tightly. Four people hand raked bunkers, four walk mowed greens, two rolled greens, and one changed hole locations. Little slack existed in that plan, so any absence or delay pushed the whole course behind schedule.

Five mowers and a reassigned crew

The club bought five robotic greens mowers with one aim: reduce the time and labor that daily setup demanded. Robot technology was still relatively new to golf, so the decision came with a considerable initial investment. The club expected a positive return within three years, built on a projected 36 percent labor saving.

The mowers combine mowing and rolling in a single pass, which delivers the green speeds golfers want. Precise positioning and an in ground wire sensor kept a consistent perimeter on each green, and the robots brought less traffic around the greens than hand crews had.

• Install five robotic greens mowers for the daily greens cycle
• Combine mowing and rolling in one operation on each green
• Move four staff off setup and onto tasks ahead of play
• Track the redeployed hours against the labor saving the club projected

What the morning looked like afterward

Morning setup dropped from 11 employees to seven. The four people no longer needed on setup took on extra tasks ahead of play, including ball mark repairs, hand raking greenside bunkers, changing hole locations, and blowing off clippings and leaf debris.

Quality moved in the right direction as well. The club reported greens with the speeds golfers want, a consistent perimeter on every green, and less traffic around the putting surfaces. The club also expected golfer satisfaction to rise with the extra attention to detail the crew could now give, though that was a judgment and not a measured result.

The 36 percent labor saving and the three year payback were the club's projections when this account was published in August 2017. Read the study as a dated example of one club's decision, not as a benchmark for today's equipment prices or labor costs.

What this means for a course or grounds operation

Service Robot Co. is a full service, OEM neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train, and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network, so a golf property deals with one partner and one number from start to finish.

A typical path starts with a site assessment, which maps the course and sets the perimeter, the traffic pattern and the go live plan before any figure is quoted. Customers then take one of our robots on a three year lease, with one fixed payment quoted after that assessment. This study describes a documented example, and Service Robot Co. did not run this deployment.