Greenkeeper's Diary: How to help your course

May 12 2008 by The Journal

We have started the golf season with typical British weather - sun, snow, hail and rain! With most courses having their captain's drive in during April, we as greenkeepers like to present the course in as good a condition as possible. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't helped us this year and it is always difficult when members watch the Masters and wonder why their course doesn't look like Augusta.

After continuing the spring programme through early April including top dressing greens and hollow tining green surrounds and fairways, we have finished our main winter project building our new 4th tee.

This has been an experiment for us using astroturf instead of grass. I am sure many of you are now thinking why use astroturf on a summer tee box.

The area we have built the tee in is very shaded by trees and therefore doesn't receive much light or wind, and so it would be very difficult to keep grass growing here.

The technology in astroturf has improved significantly in the last few years, and provides a grass-like feel to hit off, rather than the firm surface that mats have always produced. Since opening the tee box we have had nothing but compliments about the surface, and although it is an expensive outlay, once constructed it requires minimal maintenance and therefore freeing up the greenkeepers to work on other areas of the course.

Due to the success of the astroturf we are now looking at other tees we could use it on, particularly par 3s which always suffer, due to a high concentration of use in a small area.

There are three main areas where golfers can assist greenkeepers to help maintain the course - pitch marks, divots and raking bunkers.

:: All golfers should carry pitch forks with them to repair pitch marks, but unfortunately not all golfers know how to use them. The right way is to discard the loose piece of turf taken out by the ball; insert the repair tool just outside the back of the ball mark; pull the turf toward the centre of the hole; gently tap the repaired area with your putter. Most golfers incorrectly pry up the centre of the depression with their tool but all this does is expose the soil and therefore delay the healing process;

:: There is nothing worse for a golfer than landing in a footprint in a bunker, it only takes a minute or so for a golfer to rake their footprints. However when golfers don't do this it can take 2 greenkeepers a whole day to rake all the bunkers on the course, this time could be better spent elsewhere on the course. Raking a bunker with your clubhead is not sufficient in leaving the bunker in the correct state for the next golfer, and remember it could be your ball in the footprint next time;

:: Divoting of fairways is a long and lengthy process for greenkeepers and by golfers replacing their divots it not only saves us time but also helps the grass recover faster.

I hope this month's article has made golfers more aware of what we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, and after all what we are all trying to achieve is to have the golf course in as good a condition as possible, and everybody including you as golfers can help achieve this.