Dan Farnes stood on the edge of his masterpiece: over 80,000 square feet of grass, cut, rolled, fertilized and aerated with precision.
The sun shone down on the expanse of green in the middle of Rio Tinto Stadium, only run down next to the sidelines, revealing the assistant referees’ path back and forth as they tracked the last man back.
“We want the surface to be as flat as possible,” said Farnes, the Director of Field and Grounds for RSL, the Utah Royals and Real Monarchs, after an RSL training session at the stadium last week. “For ‘premium ball roll’ is what we say.