By: Carl Schimenti, Urban Environmental Scientist
In my golfing travels so far this year, I’ve heard many comments from golfers about slow greens. I don’t really trust individual golfers (especially during their poor rounds) to give thoughtful and unbiased feedback on course conditions, but I do tend place some merit on their wisdom-of-the-crowd feedback being indicative of real trends. In playing different courses and hearing from different people, it was plausible to think that greens region-wide have been slower than normal.
In fact, some of the data we’ve collected at our research plots this year supports the crowd-sourced thoughts of the golfers. Our undergraduate research coordinator, Taylor Brock (SUNY Delhi), has been carrying out various rolling trials this year. He’s been investigating how rolling frequencies might influence organic matter accumulation, weed invasion, and playability. On an A1/A4 bent grass putting green, mowed at 1/10th of an inch, he’s been applying treatments of: no rolling, 3 rolls per week, 5 rolls per week, and 10 rolls per week (double rolled 5 times per week).
Looking at the data recently, we were surprised at how slow the various treatments were. Unrolled, the greens have averaged only 9.3 ft on the Stimpmeter since the middle of May – clearly a good argument for rolling! But even at 3x and 5x rolling per week, speeds have averaged 9.8 ft and 10.0 ft, respectively. The 10x rolling treatment? 10.7 ft. In ideal growing conditions that have received only maintenance traffic so far this year, we’ve struggled to crack 11 ft with essentially a tournament set-up every day.
I believe this comes down to humidity. The turf canopy has had a particular affinity for moisture this year, given the high humidity. This leads to a softness in the surface that seems to place drag on the ball, like rolling a bowling ball on a bed. Scott Dodson, retired superintendent at The Park Country Club, once told me how he measured green speed daily one year and found that dew point was the best predictor of green speeds. I suspect that at the end of this year’s research trials, we’ll find something similar.
For courses with resource limitations, the reality is that greens speeds have probably been lower than preferred. I wouldn’t call the abnormal humidity this year an excuse for slow greens, but I would call it context. If there is a strong desire to increase green speed, our data thus far indicates the effect of increasing rolling, say from 3 to 5, would be minimal.It would take an intense effort (10x) to see real improvements, and that is a case that requires forfeiting work elsewhere on the course.
When we eventually move out of this humid weather pattern, it could be worth documenting how green speeds change, even without changes to agronomic practices. As John Reilly says: “DATAMATTAS”.