Learn How Texas Diamond Irrigation & Landscaping Tackled a 36-Hole Irrigation Overhaul with Ditch Witch Equipment

The sound of a slot machine paying out is unmistakable. The metallic rattle. The flashing lights. The moment chance tips in your favor and the reels align in perfect symmetry, triple sevens glowing.

At the golf courses at WinStar World Casino and Resort, just steps away from one of the largest casinos in the world, Texas Diamond Irrigation & Landscaping was chasing a different kind of jackpot. Not luck. Timing.

Because in the golf course business, the stakes don’t blink in neon. They grow in grass. Every missed deadline lingers in the dirt for an entire season. Every delay risks millions of gallons of water, miles of pipe and months of work sitting dormant beneath an unforgiving southern sun.

And when the timeline says 36 holes in four and a half months, there’s no room for bad hands. You either go all in or fold.

For Lance Martin, president of Texas Diamond Irrigation & Landscaping, folding was never part of the game.

Playing Against the Clock

Most golf course renovations happen in phases. Three holes one year. Another section the next year. WinStar was different.

The casino shut down both of its championship golf courses at the same time, creating a massive, fast-moving renovation schedule that included a complete irrigation replacement alongside regrassing and course improvements.

To keep that schedule from slipping, Texas Diamond needed equipment that could move quickly across long stretches of course, adapt as soil conditions changed and limit the restoration work left behind. The crew relied on a fleet that included Ditch Witch ride-on trenchers, an RT125 Quad and an RT80 Quad which became central to keeping the 36-hole renovation on pace.

“They wanted the entire thing done fast,” Martin said. “Not nine holes at a time or sections spread out over years. They wanted all 36 holes turned around in four and a half months, and that takes a whole different level of coordination.”

With crews spread across nearly two miles of golf course, coordination became just as important as the installation itself.

The crew installed everything from 16-in. mainline pipe down to 2-in. lateral lines. Thousands of sprinkler heads. Miles of wire. Endless fittings, tie-ins and connections.

And because the course stretched nearly two miles from one side to the other, multiple crews often worked simultaneously in completely different sections of the property just to maintain production.

“We could have one crew running pipe on one side of the property and another crew doing the exact same thing almost two miles away,” Martin said. “That’s how spread out the job was.”

Golf course irrigation projects revolve around grassing windows. If contractors miss the planting schedule, new turf struggles to establish roots before temperatures change, pushing delays far beyond construction itself.

Cody Crawford, equipment manager for Texas Diamond Irrigation, said the timeline dictated nearly every decision the crew made on the project.

“Everything on a golf course revolves around the grassing schedule,” Crawford said. “When you’re working against that timeline, everybody has to stay locked in and moving together.”

Martin has a phrase he uses when schedules start looking impossible on paper.

“You load the wagon, I’ll find the mules,” he said. “Once that timeline starts moving, there’s no slowing down.”

At WinStar, that mindset mattered. Sand had already been hauled onto the property. Fairways had been tilled. Existing conditions were being reshaped. Once construction started moving, the irrigation crews had to keep pace with every other part of the renovation.

For Martin, that kind of pressure was familiar. Long before Texas Diamond Irrigation & Landscaping was taking on 36-hole renovations, he was learning how golf course projects move, how quickly conditions can change and how much reputation matters in such a specialized industry.

From Thailand to Texas

Founded in 2008, Texas Diamond Irrigation & Landscaping has grown from a one-man operation into a specialized golf course irrigation contractor with nearly 50 employees primarily serving projects across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. As word of its work spread throughout the golf industry, opportunities followed, taking Texas Diamond to projects across the country.

But Martin’s path into golf course construction was built decades earlier.

In the early 1990s, Martin traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, at just 19 years old to work on golf course construction projects. What began as a short-term opportunity turned into two years working alongside some of the industry’s top course designers.

“When I went to Thailand, I was just a 19-year-old kid wanting to work,” Martin said. “I ended up spending two years building golf courses and learning how special that industry really is. It’s a small business, people know each other and your reputation means everything.”

That early experience shaped how Martin approached the work. Golf course construction was not just about moving dirt or installing pipe. It was about precision, relationships and trust.

After returning to the United States, Martin continued building that foundation through grassing projects, course shaping and irrigation work across the Southwest. When the golf market slowed, he shifted into commercial and municipal irrigation, but the relationships he built in golf never went away.

As courses built in the 1990s and early 2000s began aging into major renovations, old relationships started turning into new phone calls. Superintendents, contractors and longtime industry contacts needed crews that understood the demands of golf course work.

That is how Texas Diamond found itself back on the kind of projects Martin first learned decades earlier.

One of those calls eventually led to WinStar Casino Golf Club, where the scale of the job tested nearly every part of that experience including the relationships, the planning, the precision and the ability to keep moving when the schedule left no room to slow down.

The Difference is in the Details

Golf course construction leaves little room for mistakes.

On commercial jobs, imperfections can disappear into the scale of the work. Golf courses are different. Players see the finish. Superintendents see the craftsmanship. Owners see every transition from one area to the next.

“Golf courses are all about precision,” Martin said. “You can roll a marble across them. Every little thing matters. The cleanup, the finish work, the way everything ties together. That’s the kind of stuff people remember.”

That mindset shaped the way Texas Diamond Irrigation approached the WinStar renovation.

Across the property, irrigation crews had to work alongside other contractors who were tilling fairways, reshaping course features and hauling in sand while the new system was being installed underneath.

“There were sections we had to minimize damage as much as possible,” Martin said. “Other areas gave us more room to move, but we still wanted everything clean when we left.”

As soil conditions changed throughout the property, the crew adjusted with them. In some sections, plowing allowed faster installation with less surface disruption. In heavier clay, trenching became the better option.

No matter the conditions, the expectation never changed.

“You can band aid a system together if you want to,” Crawford said. “But we’d rather put it in the ground right the first time so the course can perform the way it’s supposed to.”

For Martin, reliability matters just as much as production speed.

“If you spend the time doing it right the first time, it pays off for everybody in the long run,” he said.

The Machine That Changed the Pace of the Project

As production demands increased, the Ditch Witch RT125 became one of the most important machines on the project.

Crews used the RT125 to pull and plow sections of 8-in. pipe across the course, sometimes stretching runs 600 to 800 feet at a time depending on soil conditions. In sandy, workable soil, the machine could keep crews moving fast enough to install nearly all the lateral line for a full golf hole in a single day. When they hit heavier clay, they swapped over to trenching and kept moving instead of hauling in another machine.

“Without that machine, there’s no way we finish 36 holes in four and a half months,” Martin said. “It let us stay ahead of the schedule instead of chasing it.”

On a golf course, minimizing ground disturbance can save valuable time during restoration and grassing.

“We were covering miles of golf course every day,” Crawford said. “The RT125 gave us the ability to move quickly without creating unnecessary disturbance behind us, and that made a huge difference on a renovation that size.”

The Call That Always Got Answered

For Texas Diamond Irrigation, equipment was only part of the equation. Support behind the machines mattered just as much.

The company works closely with Wes Dukes from Witch Equipment Co. in Dallas, Texas, who became a key resource throughout the WinStar project.

“Wes was always available,” Martin said. “On a project moving that fast, that kind of responsiveness matters.”

During the WinStar renovation, Dukes visited the site multiple times to help crews get familiar with new equipment and ensure machines were operating properly after delivery.

“When you’re operating on timelines like that, communication matters,” Crawford said. “If we needed something, Wes answered the phone and helped us figure it out quickly so the crews could keep working.”

On a project moving at WinStar’s pace, downtime was not something crews could afford.

“That equipment might sit for a few weeks between jobs,” Martin said. “But when it’s time to go, it has to go immediately. Having dependable support behind the equipment makes a huge difference.”

For Martin, that level of support separates a dealership from a true partner.

“If you take care of me, I’ll take care of you,” he said. “That’s how I’ve always done business, and that’s the kind of relationship we’ve built with Wes and the team at Witch Equipment.”

What It Looks Like When the Pressure Pays Off

But projects like WinStar are also why Martin and his team enjoy the work.

At the end of the renovation, the pressure started giving way to perspective. Bare dirt turned back into fairways. Irrigation systems disappeared beneath finished turf. The jobsite slowly started looking like a golf course again.

“You stand there at the end and look across 36 finished holes knowing what it looked like when you started,” Crawford said. “That’s the rewarding part. Seeing everything come together and knowing the course is ready to go again makes all the hard work worth it.”

That mentality has helped Texas Diamond retain long-term employees, strengthen partnerships and continue growing within one of the golf industry’s tightest circles.

At WinStar Casino Golf Club, it also helped deliver one of the company’s most demanding projects under an aggressive timeline.

No shortcuts. No missed deadlines. Just miles of pipe, months of work and a crew determined to get the job done right the first time.

Luck Had Nothing to Do With It

At casinos, people chase jackpots hoping the odds fall their way.

But out on the course at WinStar, success had nothing to do with luck.

It came from crews willing to work long after the sun went down. From relationships built over decades. From equipment capable of covering miles before the grassing window closed. And from a team that understood that in an industry built on trust, consistency and execution, the little things still matter.

Because when the stakes are high and the clock is running out, the real winners aren’t the ones gambling.

They’re the ones willing to go all in.

This article was provided by Ditch Witch. Click here for more info.