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Healthy Sod is High-Tech Firm’s Turf (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
When the words water and crisis are used in the sporting world, it could be that a tee shot is heading for a pond. Then there’s Walter Norley’s idea of a water crisis.
That would be when soccer hunk David Beckham skins his flawless face on turf that is too dried out. Or if next month’s 42d Walker Cup Match at Merion Golf Club were to be scrapped because some disease ate the greens.
In short, when the right amount of soil moisture is not achieved on playing surfaces, sports tragedy can ensue.
Enter Norley, an entrepreneur with a college quarterback’s appreciation for sports (because he used to be one) and a sensitivity to environmental stewardship. That combination has yielded UgMO, a private company in King of Prussia that has boomed – in sales and in raising investment money – while others have drowned in this dismal economy.
For years, assessing the health of athletic turf has been a rather primitive exercise, largely amounting to taking a pinch of soil between one’s fingertips to feel if it is too wet or too dry. UgMO, a subsidiary of Advanced Sensor Technology Inc., has elevated the process into a state-of-the-art world of wireless underground monitoring, Google maps, and computers.
