Above are the putting green metrics for the day. Once again, the main goal is a trueness factor that's less than 1 and a smoothness factor less than 5. There is one more metric the GS3 ball is capable of measuring on a putting green and that is, firmness. In order to measure the firmness of a putting green, The GS3 ball is placed in the device shown below. The arm is lifted about 18" above the green and dropped. The GS3 ball measures how deep the end of this device impacted the putting green. You can see during our test, the arm impacted the green to a depth of 0.476". This number will change day to day and is a factor of two things. One is the moisture content of the greens. Greens are always softer after periods of rainfall. The other factor that will affect firmness is the amount of organic matter below the greens. This is also sometimes referred to as "thatch."
Another way to look at these metrics is to compare them to a golf course that recently hosted a PGA Tour event. A friend of mine worked a recent event and shared with me the data at this golf course:
First, the green speed fell in the 12.5' to 13' range.
Next their trueness factor during the event was 0.75 (the lower this number, the better).
Their smoothness factor varied between 3 to 4 (again, the lower the number, the better).
Last, the firmness factor fell in the 0.400 to 0.450 range (the lower the number, the firmer the surface)
If you happened to watch our fairway mowers in action this morning, you may have been wondering why they were driving in circles. We call this, circle cutting. By driving in large circles, working the mowers down the fairway, the turf receives a great quality of cut because it's being mowed at many different angles. This promotes upright growth and increased turf density. We make an effort to circle cut our fairways once every month.
Right now, our fairways and roughs are growing at a fast pace and it's difficult to keep up with the excess growth without leaving clumps of grass clippings behind the mowers. This is the case every year at this time. Our spring fertilization and the excess rainfall we've been receiving are the main culprits. In another week, the growth will slow down to a more manageable rate.