S'pose I autta throw in my 2 cents.... Virtually every single house (with very few exceptions) in my neighborhood has bermudagrass. 99% of all the homeowners with bermudagrass mow around 1-1/2" to 2" up to maybe 3" with rotary mowers, and most the lawns look okay. Some mow way too infrequently & their lawns really look like $#!+. Very few mow very low/short (one guy in particular with a Lawn Boy about a block away) and no matter how hard he tries he leaves the dreaded rotary swirl marks. If you really want the thick dense short fairway looking bermudagrass there's only one way to do it..... Buy a reel mower. Keep your Murray....you say you got it running again? Mine's 8 years old now, I use it from time to time to mow the neighbor's lawn (he's up in years & health not so good) and I also use it to do clean up in spring/fall. You could use yours in that area of creek frontage & stuff. Now that it's running again, take care of it. Change the oil each year. Keep the blade sharp. Always use Sta-Bil in every can of gas you buy for your lawn equuipment. You can use your rotary Murray to mow while you decide what reel to buy. (Or while you look for a reel to buy.) You've obviously read many of the posts in this forum so I won't belabor the opinions of which brand is best. (But the Tru-Cut is best) 8^) Is it foolish (or necessary) to really want both? Nope. Keep ur current rotary. If you really feel you need to upgrade the rotary, go ahead, but if you take care of the one you have, it'll last longer than you think. Splurge for the reel so you can have the golf course look you want (Buy a used one if you don't wanna spring for new, I did & only spent around half.) I get many comments of praise from friends/relatives who come by to visit, but what really makes it worth it is when folks I don't even know just stop to tell me how good it looks. It seems to make it all worth while. You can't make it look like this with a rotary: My 2 cents.... Good day, Dan

A properly sharpened and set up reel mower will always give a better cut than a rotary. Reel mowers cut like a pair of scissors, the grass is cut by a moving blade against a stationary bedknife. It also gives more even results as the bedknife holds the blades up while they are cut as opposed to being hit by a spinning blade with some lift provided by a suction effect from the blade. After I cut my lawn with a rotary I usually have some missed blades. Reel mowers are the only ones that can cut very short, so if you want to have a fairway for a yard, then you need a reel mower. A bumpy yard however, will give an uneven cut at low heights (the yard will look even, but the grass on mounds will be shorter and in the dips will be longer), and scalping can occur, but this is also true of rotaries too. Rotaries, if their blades aren't very sharp will tear grass blades, so you get ragged edges, which isn't great for grass, although a poorly sharpened reel can have its issues too.

If you have a fairway style yard that you plan to mow when it's only 1/2 inch or so higher than the rest then yes that will work assuming it is weed free. The reels require maintenance and are impossible to sharpen correctly without taking them to a golf course shop or someone with a reel grinder. Expect to spend $300 or more to have it sharpened. Get a wide ZTR to mow your yard with.

What the heck did I just see? lol. Nice quirky! Where the heck did you find that? He's actually got some nice moves! Rayray, for a yard that size I'd be exclusively using a reel mower. I mow 15,000 sq ft with a reel mower. Yes, you need to stay after it because it won't mow down high weeds but so what just clip them or dig them out with a weed hound. I use the scott's 20" reel. So to sum up, real men use reel mowers! :)