As part of our ongoing maintenance of the short game area, we will periodically be aerifying it using solid tines (which do not remove a core). This is typically considered a fairly non-invasive procedure which won't be noticed by golfers after just a couple of days.
When the aerifier hits a rock and it is heaved up as shown below, it's typically not a big deal. But, we occasionally will get one wedged between two tines, or even have a buried golf ball get speared by a tine. When that occurs, the not so invasive solid tining can quickly start plowing up some turf. Because of this, we have changed the operation to a two person job--one team member operates the machine, and the second acts as a spotter, walking behind the aerifier and making sure there's no torn turf.
While the majority of rocks we ran into are like the one shown above (somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a baseball), we did find a nice 15 pounder. After hitting this large rock with the aerifier, we probed around to see what we were dealing with beneath the surface.
It was then that our Equipment Technician, Don Robel, made a seemingly contradictory, yet quite accurate statement: "It's shallow, but deep!"
With any luck, after going over this area a dozen times with our aerifier, we will have either broken up, or removed all of the major obstacles from below, and it can once again become a single person task.
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