I'm Mark Smith I'm the golf course superintendent at Hawk's Nest golf course
Ohio State ATI. I've been superintendent for ten years
we are currently owned by The Ohio State University
Ventrac has been a part of Hawks Nest now for the last five years in many
different capacities using it from the contour deck to tough cut to turbine
blowers to any attachment that we feel we have needed to make the golf course
successful.
When we first took on Ventrac and the contour deck it took a couple weeks to
first realize we have people coming up to us that they were done mowing on
Wednesday afternoons. Well there is no possible way because to get around the
golf course with the white area mowers was a day-and-a-half job. Well the Ventrac
was capable of mowing about twice the amount of area that we currently
were mowing with a different piece of equipment. He was mowing extra areas to
keep the white area mowers out of which in turn cut their job down by almost 10
hours a tractor. We're capable now of having everything mowed by Tuesday
afternoon to go around the whole Golf Course and that includes about 65 acres
of you know short cut rough that those tractors are working on. With Ventrac
everything is trimmed during the week it's not left go because we didn't have
manpower or we ran into weather. Ventrac is capable of doing it all for us and
the presentation of the golf course at the end of the week is a lot better.
There's no comparison on the market - whatVventrac is capable of doing we've
demoed a lot of equipment over the years and nothing has been able to mow our
lake banks and hillsides with the 4,500 tractor and the dual tires we're able to
mow about 95% of the areas on the golf course. We have a lot of hillsides on our
golf course that the Ventrac is capable - most straight up and down those hills
which used to be a push mower and a weed eater job we have reduced about 25 hours
a week of hand labor with the Ventrac.
Our areas that are native are hillsides and out-of-the-way areas on the golf
course. Originally when the course was built we weren't going to maintain an
additional 25 acres at two inch rough height so we let it go up into a [inaudible] negative
areas. Well what we found over the years was using a tractor and a brush hog
there's a number of places that we could not mow because of the hillsides. You
know the tractor was just unsafe to go mow those when Ventrac demonstrated the
tough cut on their dual wheel tractor and then being able to hold a 30 degree
slope we can mow from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hills without any
worry of danger and we're able to mow all the the native areas down with the
tough cut mower.
With the Buffalo turbine blower equipped with a dual wheel tractor we're able to
blow hillsides down, cart paths down, in a timely manner. We run the dual wheel
tractor and the Buffalo turbine blower across greens leaving no tire tracks or
footprints whatsoever. We can have greens cleared off, greens mowers are able to
follow and mow, there's no holdup and play and the areas that the tractor is
capable of getting into with a mower deck on it they can do the same thing
with the Buffalo turbine on it and all of a sudden we don't send out backpack
blowers anymore we take care of everything with an operator on the seat
safely on a Ventrac with the Buffalo turbine blower.
Being owned by The Ohio State University we are always forced to look at
alternative fuel options it's one of the first pieces of equipment that I saw in
the golf industry that is capable running on propane so people that are
looking for an alternative fuel option the only company that they can look to
is Ventrac at the current time in the market. It limits you in no ways of what
the tractor is capable of doing, they've just thought outside of the box and went
into the propane model and probably the thing of the future is going to become
propane.
When budgets are shrunk and the economy is tight in the golf industry we're all
fighting for the dollar to replace a piece of equipment. But when you can go
to a board member, a greens committee, or an owner and set down and tell them the
value of one piece of equipment that I don't need to come back to you and ask
for snow removal equipment I don't need to come back and ask for another tractor
to be able to mow an area. Ventrac is truly capable of taking care of 12
months of season of anything that needs to be done in a golf course operation.