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I
t was one of those eye-opening
moments.”
In fall 2014, Lester George,
ASGCA, was working at Vestavia
Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama,
when one of his subcontractors reached
into his van and took out a drone.
“I’m like ‘he’s not going to launch that
thing is he?’” recalls George. “But he
did, and flew it up to about 400 feet to
show us what it could do. After I had
got over how cool it was, I realized how
useful it would be to see the golf course
from whatever perspective I wanted.”
Vestavia has a lot of rock on the
property, and footage from a camera
attached to the drone showed the
grass as a lighter color where the
rock was closer to the surface. “I
could see it from the ground as
well, but not in its totality,” explains
George. “It showed me where I was
going to have to either expose the
rock, or cover it to give grass the
right conditions to grow in.
“It was almost an immediate ‘a-ha’
moment for me, I went out and
bought one right away.”
“