While pushing my lawnmower around this evening, I thought about how fast my grass grows. After just a few days, it looks like it needs cut again, especially around this time of year. I’d love to do it less than weekly, but if I waited any longer, I’d bog down the mower.
I was also thinking how much I’d rather be golfing…and how even at its shortest, the grass in my yard only approaches the height of the rough around an average fairway. The rest of a course (the places I spend little time, like fairways) are extremely short. No doubt the fairways and greens are some variety of bentgrass, which I can only assume grows pretty slowly. But the rough on all the courses around here closely resembles the rye/fescue/bluegrass mix I have in my yard. Only their grass never gets as long as mine (or it would be near impossible to find a ball in the rough, much less play out of it).
Now, those of us with short hair know that it needs to be cut more often to maintain the same basic appearance. While long hair might barely seem any different 3 or 4 weeks after a cut, my finger-length hair can more than double in length in that time – even though the same amounf of length has been added. Applying this logic to golf courses, it would seem that they’d have to mow all the rough every few days. But I never see groundskeepers doing much work. And it seems hard to believe that those hundreds of acres get groomed multiple times per week.
Does anyone know the scoop on golf course maintenance? How often are various parts of the course cut? And if they spray stuff that keeps the grass from growing as fast, where can I get some?!
anytime I hit the course early in the AM, they’re mowing the greens. Even the cheapy courses do this every day. Fairways will be mowed daily or every-other-day, depending on the quality of the course. I don’t know exact schedules for rough mowing, and it will depend on the course and whether the USGA is planning a national championship there.
I am not a greenskeeper; I’ll answer only what I know for sure:
The greens on most courses (if not all courses, public and private, that aren’t “pasture” courses) are mowed daily; usually very early in the morning. I am reasonably sure that the same applies to fairways in most instances, and I’m not sure as to rough. There’s a greenskeeping crew of varying number to ensure speed.
Of course, the secret to getting the grass as short as they do is the use of a mower with a reel-type blade (or multiple blades as the case may be). Even many old-fashioned push-type reel mowers can give your grass a shorter cut than your standard home rotor—and it’s cleaner, too, since there’s no rotor hacking away, but a flat knife being run across the grass. When everything else is right, a bedknife can cut the grass as short as the knife is thick (usually 1/8" or so, shorter with a thinner blade), whereas a rotor, given its violent nature against the ground, is limited to 3/4" or so at best. “Fairway length” is generally around 1/2". Putting green grass-height is generally between 1/8" and 1/4", depending on the course. Rough varies as well, of course.
And, the types of grasses vary upon climate. Bent is the rule for greens outside the Southern US due to its grainless nature (much of the South uses the grainier bermuda for greens), and fairways and rough consist of anything from bent to bermuda to bluegrass to rye (annual rye is often used for overseeding in winter to make things look green).
Oddly enough, this is being worked on. I don’t know how advanced or widespread this is, given the date of the webpage and the sensitive nature of golf course-mowing.
I worked on the groundskeeping crew at a fairly crappy golf course for two summers. We mowed greens and tees every morning starting at the crack of dawn, fairways (“the safest place on the course,” as we used to call them, since we had very little fear that anyone would hit us with a ball if we were on them) about every other day, and rough about weekly (but I don’t remember ever mowing the rough other than occasional trimwork with a weed eater or push mower, so I could be wrong about that). As Joe K mentioned, much of the ability to mow short comes from the design of the mower, and partly from the frequency of mowing (we couldn’t mow it as tight if, for whatever reason, we had to leave it unmowed for a day or two).
BTW, we would have loved to have something to spray to keep the grass from growing too fast, but alas we had no such tricks. In fact, I doubt groundskeepers could use something like that; if the grass wasn’t constantly growing, people walking on it and slicing chunks out of it would probably damage it beyond what could regrow. In fact, we kept everything pretty heavily fertilized to keep it growing. Note that golf course grass is also fairly constantly watered, even in relatively wet areas like Michigan (where this particular course was), again to keep it healthy and growing despite constant abuse.
Not all golf courses have the same mowing rotation. A premium golf course such as the one I work at will mow the greens and fairways daily or bi-daily. The rough will be mowed every 3-4 days. This changes depending a lot on weather, time of year, and available staff and machines. During an extremely hot dry summer, we will not irrigate the rough and allow the rough to brown and die to conserve on water, so mowing is not required. When water conservation is enforced in the community, it is the right thing to do.
I used to live in a condo on a golf course and the mowers would come by every other day. I think they skipped one day a week. The sprinklers I think came on the opposite days.
I worked grounds crew at a small, public course in high school. It had a full course and an executive course with a total of 27 holes. Every morning we would mow the greens. After that we would mow teeboxes and the collars around the greens. Fairways were mowed every other day, IIRC. The rough was constantly being mowed. By the time the entire rough was finished, it was time to start again. In addition to mowing, weed wacking was part of the regular maintenance.
My experience as a caddy way back when, agrees with the previous posts. Greens, first thing every morning the groundskeepers were mowing with special hand mowers. Tees -same. Aprons around tees and greens every day or two. For fairways, there was always a crew out every morning doing one hole or other; after all, fairway grass should not be much taller that half to two-thirds the way up a golf ball (preferably less). Fairways were mowed with a ganged set of about 6 to 10 of those spiral cutters like hand-push mowers use, pulled by a tractor. I never say a spinning blade mower like home lawnmowers, except in the hard-to-reach spots and the clubhouse lawn, where the tractors didn’t fit.
Also, caddies could play Monday mornings (ah, summer vacation) but had to wear spiked shoes since the greens were susceptible to serious damage if wet from dew and people skidded on them.
they also had nifty sprinklers with a little water-powered winch in them, I seem to recall - they would creep along the side of the fairway while winding up a cable staked at the far end.
Imagine how much the grass has grown between the last post in this thread before yours and your post. (Just so everyone knows how much of a Zommbie this is).
Are the types of mowers typically used loud? I’ve considered moving across the street from the side of a golf course. It’s less than 50ft away and might be annoying to hear lawnmowers at 5am every morning. Is that a very likely scenario?
I lived for a year with my backyard opening onto a tee box. Sometimes you could hear them mowing in the morning but it never woke us up. The machinery that did the fairways was bigger, but at least at that course was well-muffled.
All in all, the golf course was a quieter neighbor than when I’ve lived backed up to other houses with kids or especially with dogs.
