Black Desert Resort Golf Course in Utah is breaking new ground in all senses of the word this week with its hosting of the PGA Tour’s first event in the state for over 60 years.
The staging of the inaugural Black Desert Championship (October 9-13), which is part of the Fall Series, is also notable as being the first time that a PGA Tour event is being held on a course that uses automated mowers to cut its fairways.
A group of four electric Autonomous Mowing Platforms, which were supplied by Salt Lake City-based agricultural machinery company FireFly, take four hours to mow all 18 fairways on the 7,371-yard, 71-par course.
Each of the five-gang mowers is 2.4m wide and has four independent motors with a rechargeable battery pack that can operate for five hours on a single charge. The AMPs are sent out at night, beginning their shift at 2am, leaving the human workforce free to focus on maintaining the greens, tees and surrounds later on in the day.
FireFly co-founder Steve Aposhian said: “It’s truly an honor to have been selected by Black Desert to maintain their fairways for such a prestigious event. It validates that the technology we have built into AMP will revolutionize the industry, while also highlighting that this is the only autonomous mower on the market currently capable of taking on such a task.”
He added: “Our machines allow groundskeepers to utilize their time better. They’re getting to do the jobs they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get to. And then ultimately the playability of the course improves.
“Utilizing FireFly’s QuickPlan software, the team was able to create mowing patterns for each fairway that perfectly align the striping direction for the entire course. Once created, the cloud-based mowing patterns can be utilized by all AMP mowers to ensure that the stripes are in the exact same place every day. This kind of precision, which would be extremely difficult to achieve with manual mowers, is made possible through AMP’s GPS guidance and its ability to consistently mow straight lines, even at night — an invaluable asset for tournaments that require night-time mowing.”
Ken Yates, Black Desert’s superintendent, was initially sceptical about switching his traditional fairway mowing team for automated machines, but has quickly been won over. “I’m used to having one of guys sitting on a mower,” he said. “But these machines have proved that they can do it. And I’m comfortable with them. They’re doing a great job. Once they mapped the course it was really easy.”
Black Desert Resort opened less than two years and is one of the last design projects that the late Tom Weiskopf had a hand in before his death in August 2022.
For some additional details please see an article which appeared in Golf Digest on 10th October and prompted GBN staff to contact FireFly for more information.