The day we let the Mexicans rip

Joe Gulotti

During my assistant years, the course management I worked for decided to do a bunker renovation. A project of this magnitude is usually contracted to an outside construction company, but our superintendent decided this Herculean task would be accomplished in-house.

I wasn’t down using just our crew, but to alleviate our pressure, the club purchased a hand-operated mini excavator equipped with a trencher attachment. We were all pretty stoked about this purchase, assuming it would eliminate a ton of handwork.

Unfortunately, it didn’t, and we quickly discovered this machine was tough to maneuver within the small confines of our irregularly shaped bunkers. A team of greenkeepers armed with shovels removed the sand much faster than one person operating the mini excavator.

Despite the setback, we knew the excavator would be ideal for trenching the drainage lines, but again, the problem of maneuverability became an issue. Along with the challenge of maneuverability, the underlying soil was littered with boulders of varying size, and the trencher couldn’t run for a reasonable amount of time before coming into contact with a stupid rock. We were constantly stopping the trencher in order to hack at the boulders with picks and shovels until they were out of the way.

It was a nightmare and slowed down the process considerably. Everyone was frustrated, and if this project didn’t quicken, there was no way all the bunkers would be completed in time for the following golf season.

As we were fretting, one of our Mexican greenkeepers approached us. He suggested we bail on the excavator, give him a few greenkeepers, and they would dig the trenches using a pickaxe and shovels. There was hesitation because the club had invested some coin in the excavator and we were inclined to keep using it. But the piece really wasn’t doing an ideal job, so it was decided to let the Mexican team rip.

Things started flowing once the decision was made to dig the trenches by hand. We fell into a major groove and began moving at a reasonable pace. Watching this team bust out those trenches using only hand tools was amazing. Their precision and problem solving were remarkable, and it seemed unfathomable that they were digging trenches at a way faster clip than the mini excavator.

This was my first experience working with a majority Mexican crew, and I couldn’t help but gain a deep respect for who they were as a group. I learned about their troubles back in Mexico, where corruption reigned, education was a joke and you were more likely to end up dead before the age of 30 than to find a decent job.

They made a conscious decision to leave the homes where they grew up, their wives and children, all for the hope of finding a better opportunity in America. Being able to understand the sacrifices our Mexican crew made — while also working in a pretty tough job — had a deeply profound effect on me.

If you ask superintendents about what has affected our industry for the better over the past 20 years, I’m sure some answers would have something to do with the advances in equipment or improvements made to irrigation. Others might allude to breakthroughs in turf breeding, while some would say social media has been highly influential.

These are pretty decent answers, but for the life of me, I never understand why we don’t give the countless Latinos making up the backbone of our labor force their due. Latinos have had the biggest impact on our industry in the past 20 years, so you can go ahead and use that robotic mower, program irrigation on your smartphone, seed all your greens with improved varieties of turf, then tweet like mad about it. Just give me a crew of Latinos and you can have the rest.