To say technology is advancing at breathtaking speed would be an understatement of dramatic proportion.
It took years for man to figure out how to fly, but just 66 years after Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio built a plane that could get off the ground for just a few seconds, Neil Armstrong, from nearby Wapakoneta, became the first man to walk on the moon.
Technology is improving just as rapidly in turf maintenance. A pipedream just a few years ago, electronic mowers are now mainstream. When an autonomous greens mower arrived on the trade show floor at the GCSAA show in 2009 in New Orleans, the technology was intriguing, but failed to attract much more than curiosity from onlookers.
Today, Blackhawk Country Club in Stratford, Connecticut, maintains all of its fairways with a fleet of autonomous mowers operating under solar power.
"We had them installed in October 2023, and used that time to troubleshoot," said former golf course superintendent Bryan Barrington, co-founder and vice president of agronomy of Alliance Golf Management, which owns four courses and manages a fifth throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts.
"This is really our first year with them. We wanted to see how they work in spring, summer and fall, with frost on the ground in the shoulder seasons and leaves on the ground — things that would impede them from going out first thing in the morning, or overnight."
As a veteran superintendent of 27 years, Barrington has always considered himself a risk-taker and first-adopter who embraces new technology.
A graduate of the University of Rhode Island turfgrass program, Barrington grew-in Worcester Country Club and Red Tail Golf Club, both in Massachusetts before moving on to do the same in 2004 at The Golf Club at Oxford Greens, a daily fee course winding through a Del Webb community in Oxford, Connecticut.
In 2018, Barrington and Oxford GM Josh McKim founded Alliance Golf Management Co. with a group of other investors. Based in Farmington, Connecticut, Alliance acquired Blackhawk in 2022 and is on a path to buy a course approximately every 16 months. That portfolio includes Oxford Greens and Red Tail, as well as Silo Point Country Club in Southbury, Connecticut and Blackhawk. The company also manages Tunxis Country Club in Farmington.
In the pre-Covid era, Alliance struggled to find enough help. During the pandemic, its Connecticut properties flourished due to lockdowns that included bans on golf in neighboring states like Massachusetts and New York.
"It was a blessing in disguise," Barrington said. "People there flocked to Connecticut to play golf."
Blackhawk has a collection of 29 Husqvarna 550 EPOS autonomous mowers (shown at right and in the video above) from GreenSight, with each driven by its own solar-powered charging station spread throughout the property. GreenSight is a Boston-based technology company that provides solutions to the golf, sports turf, agriculture and defense industries.
Alliance also struggled to find enough help at Blackhawk when it bought the property two years ago. And although a shortage of labor was not why the company invested in autonomous mowing, it did play a role.
"It wasn't our goal to deplete our labor. In fact, we've increased our staff," Barrington said. "We got (the mowers) so we can reallocate our resources to completing more of the detail work."
Alliance chose Blackhawk for the autonomous mower program because a recent tree-management program has opened the course for the solar panels on the charging stations. Other courses in the company's portfolio either have too much shade or are prone to flooding.
The satellite-based Husqvarna units can mow slopes up to 45 degrees, and a pin-activated alarm helps guard against theft.
The units can be managed through Husqvarna's mobile app, and height of cut is currently set at about 15 mm, or almost sixth-tenths of an inch, and each unit at Blackhawk can mow about 1.5 acres on a single charge before retreating to its own solar-powered station. The goal, Barrington says, is to get down to about 12-13 mm.
Each charging station has its own solar panel that measures about 5 feet in length, and since they require direct access to sunlight, they're not exactly hidden.
"Some of the charging stations are visible, but GreenSight did a good job of putting them out of the way around the golf course," he said. "Now, golfers don't even notice them."
When the charge is running low, the units return to their respective charging stations.
"And when they leave the charging station, they go back to where they were and pick up where they left off," Barrington said.
Among the other features of the Husqvarna unit is the ability to recognize obstacles in its path. If a mower bumps into something in its way, such as a golf car, it will back up then start moving again when the obstacle has moved out of the way.
Stakeholders at Alliance take pride in being on the cutting edge of technology, and that played a role in choosing solar-powered charging stations rather than wired docks. There were other factors, however, involved in the decision-making process.
"The cost of running 110 (volt electrical lines) throughout the property was just too expensive," Barrington said.
After initial set-up and mowing, the autonomous mowers require little human interaction, most of which is limited to removing organic matter from the undercarriage and changing out blades every 10 to 14 days, Barrington says.
"Any build up of grass can put the mower out of balance, so we have to blow out the mowers and the docking stations," he said.
"They're really pretty trouble-free."
Alliance is a management company dedicated to finding innovative, technology-based solutions to many of the challenges facing golf industry stakeholders on the golf course as well as in the clubhouse. Although shade and the threat of flooding prevent expanding the autonomous mowing program to other courses under the company's umbrella.
"I think that is realistic as we pursue improvements on the other golf courses," Barrington said. "It would be great if we could get them on the other courses."
