It looks like winter is all but over here in North Texas. It’s supposed to get into the mid 60’s today and into the 70’s later in the week. And we all know what that means – golfers rushing the weather to get into shorts with legs whiter than the golf gloves they’ll be wearing.
Good weather also means more playing pressure on the course. More cart traffic, more fairway divots that need filling, and the bane of everyone, more ball marks that need fixing on the putting surfaces. We’re addressing cart traffic and fairway divots here at the ranch. Our superintendent is using more rope to control cart entry to the fairways – it’s amazing how thin the dormant Bermuda has gotten in places. When the temperature hits the magic number of 150 (the combined day and nighttime temperature) the Bermuda will go into vigorous growth. Those thin areas will take much longer to fill in and I’m certain they will be the topic of many conversations about course conditions.
For the most part, players here at the ranch are pretty diligent about filling divots. And to make it easier, the sand box adjacent to the cart staging area is going to be moved to the first tee. A second sand box is budgeted for the first tee of the back nine. And, our players are getting a lot better about policing their foursomes with gentle reminders about filling divots, observing 90 degree cart entry, and keeping the carts away from the greens.
I was also going to talk about repairing ball marks on greens. While looking for a picture of a ball mark repair tool I could use, I came upon an article about the Greenfix Ball Mark Elimination System. What really caught my eye were the results of a study done at Kansas State in 2003 that showed that ball marks repaired with the traditional tool actually took longer to heal than ball marks that went untouched. There’s an impressive list of courses that have adopted it and when you play there, using it is not an option. Kind of like the ‘transition’ to soft spikes. I’m sure there will be issues if we tried something like it here at the ranch but after going through the web site, they actually work with clubs to implement the program. I’ll ping our MGA President for his take on it. I’ve already done the same with our Superintendent as well as our head golf pro and it's endorsed by the PGA.
I ordered two repair tools along with an accompanying DVD from The Golf Warehouse today to give them a try. I’ve been sent a few other things for evaluation but I’ve not played enough to give them a fair shake. I’ll keep you posted on how things progress.
