Ready to Roll

After aerifying the greens on Monday, we applied over 75 tons of sand to fill the holes.  With all of this sand, we typically aren't able to mow the greens for a few days.  However, we will begin rolling them the day after we aerify. 

In the past, this rolling ahead of golfers could be a messy experience, as the sand would stick to the roller, then drop off leaving clumps across the green.  We'd often have to have two employees follow the roller using dew whips or blowers to disperse the sand.

A less messy alternative is waiting until the greens are completely dry to roll them.  However, if there's a heavy dew, that can mean not starting to roll until 10:00 in the morning, causing us to interfere with play.

Fortunately, several years ago, we found a solution to this issue.  We head out with the roller first thing in the morning, but run the green sprinklers for three minutes (or one spin), just ahead of the roller.  You might expect that adding moisture to the surface would lead to more sand sticking, but it actually does the opposite.  If we time it right, and start rolling as soon as the heads drop, there is virtually no sand pick up and no clumps to deal with.

The roller is waiting for the sprinklers to shut down.