Course Maintenance And When To Do It!

Having been away in Cornwall for the last two weeks I returned to my home course today.

When I arrived I noticed that the 18th green had been hollow tined, not a good start for my round.

Speaking to my playing partner it turns out that the greens were hollow tined just before the weekend.

The golf club had their monthly medal on Sunday and it was a bank holiday on Monday.

So once again I'm left astounded by the lack of joined up thinking at my golf club.

Who in their right mind would decide to hollow tine the greens just before a busy bank holiday weekend?

If I was paying to play I would demand some of my money back as putting was a lottery, some of my putts turned into chips shots with the ball bouncing up off of the holes.

This is not the first time things like this have happened at my golf club, so there clearly isn't anybody thinking about how things should be done.

The greenkeeper does what he wants when it suits him, regardless of when any club competitions are taking place.  The management have booked county competitions on the same day as a club competition. 

We are getting a new course manager in September and simple things like this will be one of the first things I will be asking him about.

I always thought that the greenkeeper and his staff are there to keep the course in as good a condition as they can, so that the members can play on a decent course for the majority of the year.  Having hollow tined the greens just before a bank holiday weekend tells me that they are not worried about the members, why didn't they wait until today to hollow tine the greens?

Is it the same at your golf club?

Russ

Its the right time of year, and maybe he did it after looking at the weather forecast.... but immediately before a BH! Think you nailed it when you said the G'keeper does what he wants when he wants, or he's just plain thick.

Our greenkeeper has micro tined, top dressed and brushed it in twice in the last month and I couldn't tell he'd done it without really looking. Our's is stunningly good.

Russell,

Do the Club own there own Hollow Tine machine?

Filey didn't and this sort of thing happened there so a request was put in for £150,000 to buy a machine.

Why? was asked.

"Because then the work can be done when we want to do it, not when the machine was available".

Many clubs have to do maintainence work when machines are available, not when it best suits them.

TheLyth

Brian,

Don't you think that some people complain about hollow tined greens because they don't look good, rather than don't putt well. If the job is done well, greens usually are back to normal within a couple of days except when they are done late season for drainage.

TheLyth

I feel this is only a problem on USGA spec courses, the grass just does not seem to grow like good old english grasses that are on the well established clubs.

I'll have to ask about the machinery and it's availability.

I have heard that the Crown Golf courses around here share some of the bigger equipment, so it might be the case that they have to book in advance to use it. 

Even then, booking it the week before a bank holiday weekend still seems stupid to me!

Russ

Stupid mistakes do happen.

A few years ago we had a very hot start to the year and it was suggested that we water the greens before the Easter week-end. Oops! No one had booked the Water Company to reconnect the system after the winter drain down. We nearly lost the greens that year.

TheLyth

My course did the same last Wednesday when I was, but we just had 36 hours of rain with 2 days wet forecast before the weekend. I just figured it was a pre-emptive measure for the wet conditions to improve the drainage. Saying that, my knowledge of greenkeeping could be written on the back of a postage stamp....