Over the rainbow

A rainbow over 18 West green

Well I am well and truly over the rainbows no matter how beautiful they may be.  Preparations for the Club Championships were progressing quite nicely until Tuesday evening when 25mm of rain was dumped on the courses.  Thursday night followed up with another 13mm which has both courses saturated.  The worst part of it from my perspective is the effect on the greens.  This is the time of year when the West greens are at their best and they were firming up perfectly in readiness for Round one to provide a hard and fast surface.  Unfortunately that won't be the case but the greens should still putt well.  This morning there were persistent showers that prevented us from mowing three greens and we were unable to roll.  I am hoping that the greens dry sufficiently for us to get the rollers out tomorrow morning.  Good luck to all the players in all grades.

I still can't respond to Roy Gamma's comments on pitchmarks so I will post the reply below that I sent to Roy direct;

Thanks for your comment Roy. 

The West greens do have unusually large pitchmarks which I put down to the Bentgrass being grown in the sub tropics.  The Glades and Arundel both have Bentgrass greens and suffer the same issues and damage from pitchmarks.  There is no doubt that the Bentgrass is weaker when grown up here and certainly prone to more damage than down south.

As you say the desired result is to have as much grass visible on the surface and nicely flattened out which is best achieved using the correct tool and using a twisting motion to move the grass in to the middle of the depression.  To help achieve this I would prefer that the “divot” was replaced. 

When I started playing golf my Dad told me that every time your ball lands on a green it will cause some damage that will need to be repaired and that if you take the time and use the correct tool an excellent repair can be made.  They don’t have to be perfect but an unrepaired mark that is mown over will take 4 – 6 weeks to recover against a few days for a repaired mark.

We have handed out complimentary repairers previously but found it had no impact on repairs.  It may be worth another try so I will raise it with the Greens Committee.