How drone technology and precision design are revolutionizing golf course construction

According to TravelMath.com, the distance from Little Rock, Ark., to Fajardo, Puerto Rico, is a little under 2,000 miles. The distance from West Sussex, England, to Fajardo is much farther — 4,182 miles.

With three places so fajardo — sorry, far — away from each other, how is it that the three locations can come together to build a golf green to within centimeters of accuracy of the contour map?

And what else could drone technology eventually do for a course?

What you see is what you get

Moncayo Golf Club is currently under construction on the eastern seaboard of Puerto Rico. Scheduled to open in about 18 months, the plan calls for a 7,200-yard 18-hole championship course along with a one-acre putting course and a reversible nine-hole short course. An active construction site today, the vision is already shaping up: plenty of elevation changes along the base of the El Yunque Mountains with wide-angle views of the Caribbean Sea.

U.K.-based Mackenzie & Ebert are designing the project, their first in the Caribbean, with Houston-based Heritage Links contracted as the builder. Longtime superintendent Chris May — who has stints in the Desert Southwest, the Caribbean and Asia on his résumé — joined the team two years ago as the director of agronomy. Fellow Heritage Links staffers include John Daniels, project manager (previously a USGA agronomist); Peter Bohn, longtime construction superintendent who has worked with a who’s who of architects; and Lawrence Aslarona, who has been with Heritage for more than 20 years, building courses in the U.S., Asia and the Caribbean.

Another player is also actively involved: Chase Ertzberger, who works for Lexicon, parent company of Heritage Links. Consider Ertzberger “remote staff” — he regularly pilots Moncayo’s drone, mapping the course from his office in Little Rock, Ark.

“When you think about drones, the most straightforward use case scenario is getting some pretty pictures, seeing what things look like, things that look good from a perspective you couldn’t easily achieve normally,” Ertzberger says. “What we’re generating is data where it has such a high resolution, while maintaining survey-grade accuracy, (that) we can achieve in 30 minutes to two hours of flying and work what may have taken a manned survey crew days to weeks in the past.”

With Heritage Links contracted for the project and their remote drone operator just a phone call away, Mackenzie & Ebert are striving to take golf course construction, especially the art of building greens, to the next level.

“We’re applying every possible item of technology to what we do, because we produce to that level of detail,” says Martin Ebert, partner, Mackenzie & Ebert. “We design greens in AutoCAD. But the real difference is in the construction. We’re asking contractors to build exactly to our plans. And that’s a bit of a shock to some of them. They’re used to receiving plans as a guide, rather than as, ‘absolutely, this is what we want.’ We like to see exactly what we’ve drawn.”

Endless information

John Daniels calls the approach of Mackenzie & Ebert a “much more calculated” way of designing, shaping and building greens. He says in many new golf course builds, GPS is used to lay out the perimeter of the greens and overall elevation of the surface. The individual contours are added based on simple drawings and rely on interpretation by shapers in the field.

“This approach we are following here at Moncayo is much more detailed. We’re building every single contour exactly how it has been designed, down to the smallest detail on each green,” Daniels says. “We’re using three different technologies to achieve this — we’re using GPS on the ground, GPS in the air with the drone and also an old-school laser.”

Topographic maps are then produced for each putting green, showing where adjustments are needed and using a common color system: White areas are good, dark red is up to two inches too low, dark blue is up to two inches too high.

“When I started back in 1990, our old boss didn’t draw any plans at all,” Ebert recalls. “It was just arm-waving with people on machines. When my partner, Tom (Mackenzie), came on, he had a landscape architecture background. He was doing sketches that looked great. Then we started drawing contour plans. We had to put the same piece of paper through the photocopier three times to get black, red and green on it — it was crazy.”

That method is a distant memory from how the architects work today. Ebert savors his modern approach to imaging and then creating greens from the viewpoint of a designer. From the perspective of Chris May, he appreciates it based on his viewpoint as the owner’s representative. He is quick to get out his phone and show the information available to him in real time using TraceAir software.

“These guys brought the tech in, and we had enough knowledge to figure out how we want to use it,” May says. “It’s very graphic. It saves an immense amount of time. You’ve got to be committed to it or you’d be (overwhelmed).”

While pointing at a map on his phone, he continues, “I can now survey an empty lake. How much water is that lake going to hold? We know exactly how much it’s going to hold at that line, that line and that line. When you think about it, it’s all information, and it’s just endless.”

Mind over matter

Ebert stresses that even though the sophisticated images they’re getting allow them to make decisions from afar, they’re not absentee designers. He and chief operating officer Chris Huggett make monthly visits to Puerto Rico to see the progress up close. Or in the case of Ebert, from the seat of an electric bike which he proudly races around the course.

“It is sophisticated, but once it’s set up, it makes calculations and decision-making so easy,” May says. “These guys are in the U.K., and we’re here. They draw it and put a lot of time into it. But the things you can do online now are just incredible.”

Credit much of that technological sophistication to Huggett, who has been with Mackenzie & Ebert since it formed in 2005. Originally responsible for graphic design, he now specializes in combining technical and creative design with 2D and 3D visualization, analysis, drafting and documentation. That includes building a CGI 3D model of what a proposed golf course would look like on a site before a single shovel of dirt is turned.

“I was given a remit to push the company to the front using technology,” Huggett says. “And not necessarily in golf course design, but looking elsewhere as well. We’ve been using drones for a long time now. The main thing is mapping — lidar technology mounted on drones, through to photogrammetry techniques and also videography and photography — to explain to our clients what we’re looking to produce.”

Ebert adds that he doesn’t want to discredit those who “wave their arms” as their method of design. He does believe that a good course can be built without plans, but he argues that he can build a really good course with plans.

“Some people say you can only build a golf course when you’re sitting on a machine,” he says. “We actually believe that our minds are the machines — the bulldozer and the excavator — when we’re sitting there drawing the plans, trying to imagine every little detail.”

A superintendent can dream

Chris May may be the ideal superintendent to cross paths with the team at Mackenzie & Ebert. He drives an electric car, uses a drone to make liquid and granular applications and has already employed a FireFly Automatix robotic mower at Moncayo to mow the turf nursery.

“It doesn’t stop to text, it doesn’t get lost, it doesn’t weave,” May says about the FireFly. “There used to be a lot of pride (mowing straight lines), but today, you tell someone to mow counterclockwise? Half the time, if they do it, it’s the wrong way, and it’s just deadly.”

When it comes to drones and what they could someday mean for superintendents, the sky is the limit, he says.

“Trees are very sensitive here in Puerto Rico. We had to hire an engineer, a surveyor with tree knowledge to tag the trees before we did any clearing. These guys were on-site for two years,” May says. “Then we needed to give an estimate of an area along the mountaintop that we were going to suggest for conservation. They told us it could take six months. I told them — I can count every tree on that hillside above whatever meter you want, and I can count it in about 20 minutes, and then did it. Of course, they didn’t like that!”

Perfection is not attainable

When Ebert and Huggett arrive in Puerto Rico, things move pretty fast for the duo. A lot needs to happen in a short amount of time. That might be why Ebert likes to ride the course on that electric bike — he can see more of the course up close while he’s moving from place to place.

“I hate buggy golf, even though it’s a fact of life,” he says. “Hopefully (the bike) keeps me a little fitter, makes up for all the great food and beer here in Puerto Rico.”

Back in the construction trailer, Daniels reflects on the uniqueness of working with Ebert and Huggett. He recalls when Huggett called him out to review a green edge.

“I’ve never had anybody critique the perimeter of a green that was six inches off in one spot. Normally, if a green gets a few inches narrower or wider, it goes unnoticed,” Daniels recalls with a laugh. “They go, ‘Here, it’s a little bit too narrow there.’ I said, ‘Is that important?’ Then I realized, it’s important to you guys.”

“Just for the record,” Ebert says while looking at Huggett with a sly smile, “I would have let that one go.”

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