– How do is the grass / turf on golf putting greens grown so dense, uniformly, and smooth?
In: 173
High quality grasses are selectively bred or engineered.
These are then laid with the subsurface having to meet requirements for water drainage and retention as well as clay and mineral content and absorption.
This is then leveled are shaped according to design requirements for the club.
The grass it self is maintained with cylinder or reel mowers.
These do not cut like a regular mowers with a fast moving blading chopping at the grass, instead more like scissors slicing through the leaf of the grass hundreds of times per second.
Each time a green is cut it is done at a different direction to the previous one, this promote growth in all directions instead of cutting it the same way every time where the blades of grass may lay over and grow longer before reaching blade height (the bowling greens I worked on where cut at around 2.5/3mm most of the time and as low as 1.5mm before select competitions)
The greens are also aerated or cored regularly to maintain the subsurface content and hardness of the ground.
Another process used is know as scarifying.
This involves using a machine with many vertical blades that cut the tubular non leafy part of the grass under the blades of the grass.
This removes old growth and prevents over compaction or crowding.
The surface is then covered with PGA certified sandy loam (sand with specific clay and mineral content)
Which is screened over and leveled.
All of this along with pesticides, herbicide, fungicide and fertilisers.
The greens can also be “rolled” using a machine that sits on cylindrical rollers that are quite heavy and compress(harden) The surface before games.
There’s a whole lot of work that goes into maintenance of competitive greens and grass playing surfaces.
Latest Answers