Tournament traditions, sand topdressing, organic matter, and ball bounce

As we have done for each KBC Augusta Tournament we’ve worked together, Andrew McDaniel and I went to Natty Dread for lunch at the start of the week. This year the tournament will be played on greens that haven’t been sand topdressed for fourteen months—the last topdressing was early summer of 2025.

What we’ve found, through measurements of the playing conditions each year, and comparing the conditions to the work that has been done in-between tournaments, is that for these greens, at least, you can get some pretty solid (or should I say bouncy) conditions with a lot less sand and cultivation than normal.

I visited Andrew at Keya GC last Wednesday, and we bounced some balls on the 18th green. The most recent OM2 test for this green was 20.4%. There has been no sand topdressing applied to the green in 2026. The ball can still bounce like this.

For more about this tournament, and about the Natty Dread lunch tradition, see:

• A tradition like some others
• An extraordinarily interesting golf tournament
• A lot more than your average tournament