Thursday morning maintenance photos
Golfdom Associate Editor Grant B. Gannon took on the challenge of a 2:55 a.m. wake-up call and the hour-long drive from Milwaukee to get some great shots of the crew hard at work on Thursday morning, the first day of the tournament. Here’s a look at some of what he saw:

…OK, not UFOs, but Jacobsen fairway mowers. It’s pretty dark at 4:45 a.m. Thankfully there are headlights on those mowers or we might have been run over.

Straits Course Superintendent Chris Zugel (in gray) and some of his crew check out the progress on hole No. 1 as the first signs of dawn begin to show.

You think you hate raking a bunker? This crew spent hours raking the more than 1,000 bunkers on the Straits course. Pete Dye puts the Dye into Dye-abolicol.

That’s a Jacobsen SLF 1880 fairway mower in the shadows, taking on No. 8 fairway.

The mowers have headlights, while the bunker crew uses head lamps to see what they’re doing in the early morning hours.

The first glimpse of the sun as a crew member hand-rolls the No. 17 tee box. Looks like this important penultimate hole will play to 223 yards today.

John Reid, assistant greenkeeper of The Duke’s, St. Andrews, makes sure the cup on No. 11 is cut to perfection.
Photos: Golfdom