aeration

This photo of the 18th green at Habu Country Club in March 2001 appeared in my Facebook feed on March 20, and it reminded me of springtime maintenance on golf courses in Japan.

I have recorded both my presentations from the ATPI (Association of Turfgrass Professionals Ireland) conference in Galway. One is systematic improvement of course conditions. In that, I explained how we can only get the kind of playing surfaces we want when both the soil and the grass are in the right condition.

Please forgive me for mentioning hollow-tine cultivation (or core aeration, or coring) yet again, and how it might be overdone. There’s an article I want to share with you, about what happened after coring of sand-based putting greens.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. That’s a generalization of Goodhart’s law. I’m an advocate of measuring some surface performance, plant, and soil parameters.