playability

I made a video about the bobble test with Queen. She knows about green speed, and she was familiar with the Holing Out Test using the Greenstester, but she didn’t know how to do the bobble test.

On November 2 & 3, I’ll be at the Portuguese Greenkeepers Conference in Porto. You can register for the conference at the APG website. Here are three quick notes. 1. The five exciting topics I’ll be discussing I’m going to lead a series of short seminars at the conference.

Andrew Thomson joined me from his home in rural southwestern Japan to discuss the variety of playing surfaces one can find around the world. And you won’t find many people as well-traveled, nor as familiar with the types of playing surfaces, as Andrew.

Korai (Zoysia) putting greens have a distinctive roll because of the stiff leaf blades. One consequence of this is a slower green speed than bermudagrass when given the same maintenance.

Here are some common questions about turfgrass management: how much fertilizer should I be adding at this time of year? how often should I topdress with sand? how often should I be verticutting?

This is a difficult problem—pitch mark scars—and the only long term solution I know of is firmer surfaces. I was reminded of that this week when I saw balls bouncing on the greens at a tournament in Japan (see videos below).

David Bataller organized a seminar in the VIP tent behind the 18th green on Thursday morning during the Catalunya Championship. Measuring air temperature, humidity, and wind speed on the 18th green just after sunrise.

Chris Tritabaugh has been writing an extraordinarily interesting series of blog posts. The topic, broadly, is putting green management and putting green performance. That’s a big topic, obviously. Chris, on his blog, has been taking a route through it that describes what he’s been doing and what he’s been measuring.

Chris Tritabaugh and I met to review the OM246 test results from samples collected in October 2021 at Hazeltine National Golf Club. We did this as a livestream episode of ATC Office Hours, which is available for watching or listening at your leisure.

I’ve used many different methods to assess the quality of ball roll on putting greens. This is not the distance the ball rolls—that measurement is commonly called the speed of the greens.