How to Achieve Perfect Greens: Essential Tools for Golf Course Maintenance

Greenkeeping equipment and other turf care equipment has been revolutionised in recent years, as golf course green maintenance has stepped up to follow new technologies and techniques to be better than ever before. It’s not just at the elite level of golf that players deserve to play on carpet-like greens and the perfect surfaces. At any level, grounds keepers can maintain perfect greens and great golf course quality with a few essential tools and approaches.

The importance of pristine greens

The greens are the focal point of any golf course. It’s where the final, tense action happens as you putt to finish a hole. The quality of the greens and the overall condition of the course is one of the most important factors in whether a player will decide to come back to a golf course in the future. This demonstrates how important perfect greens are to grounds maintenance staff, so how do they maintain such high quality, consistent greens to keep players happy?

Grounds maintenance equipment for putting greens

Thinking about new processes and ideas and looking at new technologies and updated machinery is something that the top grounds people think about all the time. It’s how they stay on top of their game. There are different things that impact greens, from the weather and long-term environmental changes we are seeing, to the use of adaptive golf carts and the impact they have on greens. What are the different types of turf care machinery that help to provide perfect greens?

Mowing equipment

Mowing takes up most of the time grounds maintenance staff are on the course each day. Different mowers are designed to suit different areas of the course, with the greens mower possibly the most important of the lot. Putting green mowers come in a variety of forms, including walk-behind options. The idea is always to choose the mower that gives you the most precise cut, which a walk-behind mower does, although a riding mower might get the job completed in a faster time. Greens mowers use reels instead of rotary mowers that are used domestically. This means more blades and a scissoring action for greater precision. As you move away from the putting green, the length of grass gets slightly longer, with different types of mowers used in each section, from greens collar mowers to tee, approach, and fairway mowers.

Cultivation equipment

Turf cultivation is important, and although most players don’t appreciate the necessity of a golf green aerator, it truly is required. Aeration helps to reduce soil compaction, manage thatch, and accumulation of organic matter and assists in greater water infiltration and other elements of the green. Walk-behind aerators are used on putting greens, collars, approaches, and tee boxes, as they offer greater flexibility in spacing, the depth of plugs, and the speed of the entire task when compared with tractor-mounted aerators.

Find that supplier of turf machinery and greenkeeping equipment that you can trust to deliver time and again. The best golf greens remain consistent for every single player, providing the same experience from the first tee off of the day right through to the last put sunk at the end of the day. This is only achievable if the grounds maintenance staff have access to the very best models of machinery and equipment. Once you have that supplier that you trust, hold on tight and keep them with you for years to come.