A Stroke of GNSS
Likely the first thing you think about when you hear the storied names of Colonial Country Club, Oakmont Country Club, Muirfield Village Golf Club and Bel-Air Country Club is perfectly manicured fairways, challenging rough and smooth greens—not irrigation systems. But, of course, effective watering practices are a key to making these golf courses look so spectacular.
For Michigan-based Michael Kuhn and Associates, Inc., golf course irrigation is a life’s work. Led by founder Michael Kuhn, this industry leading firm’s expertise in agronomy, engineering and technology is changing the way irrigation systems are designed, managed and updated.
Two years ago, Kuhn and his team were planning an irrigation project at Oakmont Country Club in Pittsburgh when he got his first look at the small, lightweight Trimble® DA2 GNSS receiver with subscription-based, on-demand Trimble Catalyst™ GNSS positioning service solution. The system has since transformed his golf course maintenance practices and influenced those of course superintendents and contractors across the country.
The Approach Shot
From the earliest days, a core competency of Kuhn and his team is leveraging technology to support golf course irrigation design, repair and replacement. Since the 1990s, Kuhn has relied on solutions such as CAD and GNSS—common technologies in the construction industry, but not so much in golf course management. Yet irrigation systems, which include pump stations, valves, control lines and sprinkler heads across many acres, are easily the most complicated systems on a golf course, and few of them are accurately mapped.
One of Kuhn’s first GNSS units was the Trimble Geo 7X handheld receiver with the Trimble GPS Pathfinder® Office software for post-processing of field data to improve the GNSS accuracy. “It is submeter grade, which allowed us to start creating our base maps in AutoCAD so that we could begin design,” he said. “I quickly became a fan of Trimble.”
