Rio Tinto requires serious yardwork

If your lawn is giving you headaches, consider the plight of Sandy's Nick Takas.

For 40 to 80 hours a week, he babies his grass, prepping it with fertilizer, watering the smallest of brown spots and mowing it to the length of a military haircut.

Then, just when Takas is ready to take a break from pampering his lush green carpet, 22 muscular guys come along and chase each other up and down the turf for two hours, ripping out big clumps of grass with their cleats.

That's painful enough. But then, the very next night, more than 10,000 people show up to listen to rock music and stomp on the grass. And a few days later, a dump truck unloads tons of dirt onto the lawn so that monster trucks with 6-foot tires can rev around and tear up the stadium.

At least there aren't any dogs in the neighborhood to pee on the lawn. That would be the final insult for Takas, who has had a thing for neatly mowed grass ever since he worked on a grounds crew in Columbus, Ohio.

Now that he's the field manager at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, he has his work cut out for him as he mows, waters and inspects a 120-by-74-yard soccer playing surface that is more level than Kansas.

"It's a multiple-use field, so having it get beat up is the name of the game," says Takas, 30, who took over the Real Salt Lake playing field when it opened last year after leading a turf crew at the University of Colorado. "There's a lot more that goes on with caring for this grass than people realize. If mowing was all I did, this job would be cake."

Impressed by Takas' dedication to keeping the Real field greener than the Pebble Beach golf resort, some of his co-workers suggested that I feature him in a Free Lunch so that he could finally take a lunch break.

With a broken mower to repair, divots to fill in and soccer field lines to paint, he didn't have much time to relax with his turkey sandwich.

"After our next game, I have to get ready for the Eagles concert, and we'll work through the night to get the field game-ready again," says Takas, who already has an enviable tan from all those hours on the riding mower.

While his plush field will be covered with special flooring during concerts and truck shows, "every hour counts when the lawn isn't exposed to fresh air and sunlight," he says. "Eleven thousand people out there walking around isn't great for the grass, but we'll make it work."

Still, Takas admits to cringing at the thought of monster trucks doing wheelies across his turf. Sometimes, he says, he feels like an old man who hollers at the neighbor kids to "Get off my lawn!"

Thankfully, Takas has a few high-tech tricks at his disposal, including an underground purifying system that pumps oxygen to the grass roots.