Major Equipment recently delivered their Tri-Deck mower TDR20000 to Royal Tara Golf Club.

The TDR20000 Tri-deck at Royal Tara Golf Club

“We’ve got a very mature, year-round course here,” said Jim McElroy, head green-keeper at The Royal Tara Golf Club in County Meath. “We have long, undulating drives, mostly lined by beautiful trees. And with my team of six green-keeper colleagues, we maintain the course to the highest and utmost standards. We kind of live the course and I believe it shows.”

Nestled in the Cluide Woods amongst the Tara Hills, the 27-hole complex features sand-based greens for year-round playing, tree-lined fairways and rolling hills.

“We used to use a ‘ride-on batwing mower’ but that was very slow, not so good at avoiding scalping and was quite expensive to maintain, both in terms of replacement parts and downtime,” commented Jim. “We needed a high performance mower, which was easy to operate and simple to maintain, with low running costs.

The Major Tri-Deck eliminates all the issues Jim and his team had before. The unit is a three-deck winged mower that unfolds to 6.1m (20’) wide cutting width. The three-point pivot system combined with front and rear rollers allows the machine to glide over surfaces and leave a striped finish without scalping the grass. Its ten rotors have 40 contra-rotating blades that overlap by 75mm to ensure all material is finely chopped so nutrients can return quickly back to the soil.

“This is one of the best pieces of equipment that we have at The Royal Tara,” enthused Jim. “We set the cut-of height for the rough at about 60mm (2.3 inches) and if we wanted to we could set it as low as 10mm (0.4 inches) – and without scalping. When you look at the finish it leaves, with the effects of the front and rear rollers, it’s just like we would get with a cylinder mower – if not better!”