A view from the rough …

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If you look at the picture you can almost notice lines, or small grooves, in the grass ⬆️⬇️ from today’s grooming of the putting surfaces.
Here is the material the groomers removed that was caught in the mower’s bucket. Notice all the blown dead leaves, and more importantly the much larger, coarser leaves mixed with the small ones. That’s why we groom. Ideally we want nothing but tiny leaf fragments in the buckets. Tiny fragments mean the ball is rolling on the tips of the leaves, not across the entire leaf…. Less ball roll resistance.
So what’s the big deal about grooming? It’s a great way of thinning out the turf canopy without getting real aggressive. Like a barber’s thinning shears for people who have really thick hair. The process of grooming increases ball roll and surface smoothness, as well as opens the turf canopy slightly for sand to settle into.
This cart load is from just 2 greens. This time of year we normally wouldn’t get this much grass off the entire front 9.
And of course we sanded the greens too. Sanding is a great way to smooth the putting surface by filling in blemishes.
Since we had a maintenance block, it was also the perfect time to put out some fertilizer as well.
As a side note, I want to remind everyone of proper divot filling etiquette. This is way too much sand.
Here’s why…the mowers have to plow through all that sand when mowing. If the mowers go through enough sand piles, the mowers go dull. Think of how a fresh pair of scissors cut compared to the old junkie ones. The junkie ones used to be precision ground slicing machines too, but they just were used to cut through some nasty stuff and no longer work very well. Same thing with my mowers, just more expensive!
This is what a properly filled divot should like when you’re done. My machines can cut right over the top of this without any damage to the cutting units. So if you do throw down a big pile, just smooth it out a bit with your shoe and chances are by the time the area is mowed again the sand will have settled down into the grass.
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