Dethatcher Demo Saved Day for Ruby Hills Golf Course

Oct. 2000

When Mark Licon became the superintendent at the 18-hole, Jack Nicklaus-designed Ruby Hills Golf Course at Pleasanton, Calif., three years ago, he inherited a major thatch problem.

The grass on the 18-month-old, all Bermuda golf course located in the cool weather environment of northern California's Silicon Valley was growing like crazy. Thatch build-ups ranged from four to six inches on the greens and from two to three inches on the fairways. The build-up was such that neither water nor air could get through. Plain and simple, the course was dying.

Previous superintendents — all cold-season grass superintendents — hadn't known exactly how to manage the warm-season turf. In place of cultural practices, the maintenance program had simply been to feed and feed which meant that the thatch kept building and building.

Licon, 37, whose experience had been at courses in southern California, was brought in to try save the situation. His strategy was to do a desert renovation... as if to overseed the course. But the available equipment — flail mowers — weren't capable of removing the amount of thatch that was needed.

"I wasn't removing the thatch that I wanted to remove. I was only removing the hard tissue... not the thatch, not the rhizomes," Licon says. "That's when a friend of mine, Craig Watters from Farwest (Equipment Co.), dropped by with the Dakota."

The machinery that Licon refers to is the Dakota Dethatcher 72, which was just coming on the market.

"The machine did what had never before been done at that golf course," Watters says of the thatch removal process. "I was just fortunate that Dakota was out here doing the demo at the time, so we could get the machine over to Mark. We sold the thing right on the spot.

"There's only one Bermuda course in my northern California district, so it's the only dethatcher that I have sold," Watters says. "And it went to a golf course that needed it really bad. Mark just lives and swears by it."

"The Dakota gave us the results that we were looking for," Licon says. "It did very little damage to the tissue but still got underneath the thatch to the rhizomes to really thin them out. The thatch on our fairways now is down to about one-half to three-quarters of an inch. It's a pretty awesome machine."

While this may sound like a scripted commercial (which it isn't), there's really no other way to tell the story. If you want to hear about a bump in the road, well, there was one... even though it was quickly eliminated.

"Our first dethatcher developed some major problems," Licon says of the 72-inch demonstration model. "The wire that operates the fan somehow came loose so the hydraulic fluid didn't get cooled. As a result, we blew out all the pumps. Dakota's customer service was A-plus, though. They not only came right out and got it running again, but they brought in another unit...a brand new one...for us to keep just for the trouble we had.

"Of all the companies that I've dealt with, Dakota and Farwest have service that is just A-plus. I was very impressed," Licon says.

A native of Indio in the Coachella Valley of southern California, Licon came on the golf course management scene after first attending Penn State University and then spending four years in the U.S. Navy. "When I got out of the service, an uncle of mine was the superintendent at Desert Falls Golf Club at Palm Desert, Calif., and I went to work for him as an assistant mechanic." Licon says. He later returned to school at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert and then worked at several golf courses in the Palm Springs area.

Licon became assistant superintendent at the Plantation Golf Club in Indio, Calif., in 1996 but quickly tired of the extreme heat. "That's when I found out about the job at Ruby Hills. I've been here in northern California for over three years now and (with the thatch problem cured) things have been going really well," he says.

The Ruby Hills course, the first Jack Nicklaus-designed course in northern California, is a part of an 800-home luxury golf community developed by James Ghielmetti of Signature Properties, one of the largest developers in northern California. The community, located in the wine country of the Livermore Valley, is just over the hill from Silicon Valley. Many Ruby Hills residents are "dot-com" people. Most homes are custom-built and are located on lots of from a half-acre to an acre in size. The price tags range from $2 to $5 million.

"We don't have any other Dakota equipment besides the dethatcher, but I'm working on getting the top-dresser. I really like that unit, too," Licon says.

"A friend of mine who does a lot of consulting on courses was here for the workshop-seminar at which Dakota demo-ed its dethatcher," Licon says. "He told me then that he tells everyone everywhere he goes, 'Hey, if you have Bermuda, you need to get this machine. It does the job.'"