NCGA Area of Emphasis- Daily Maintenance Operations: Fairway Divots

One of the many weekly tasks performed at TPC Stonebrae is the filling of fairway divots. Now this may seem like a minuscule task, but it is actual a very important one. There are several reasons why do this, from a maintenance standpoint it helps the fairways recover faster and also ensures a good playing surface. We usually fill divots twice a week in the afternoon.



This photo is an example of a fairway divot taken on the fifth fairway, in a area that receives a lot of play.



The first step for the guys doing fairway divot mix is to prepare the mix itself. This is done in the back of the cart and the mix ratio's are 8 shovels of a soil mix to 2 shovels of Perennial Rye grass seed.  The soil mix we use has provided great results with helping the grass seed germinate, the mix contains sand (20%), soil(70%), and peat moss(10%). After the cart is filled the guys are ready to start, they will also bring 5 gallon buckets with them so they can walk the fairways and fill every divot. Having a cart full of a prepaired mix makes it easy to fill the buckets back up when they run out.

                                         



This photo shows one of the guys dropping sand into a divot, the key here is to put just enough mix in the divot so that its barely below the level of the existing turf. This is important because the fairway mower will scalp anything that is too high, making it hard to establish any grass in that divot. Also you don't want it to be to low as it will leave a depression and uneven playing surface.



This photo illustrates the second step which is to smooth the divot, in this case with his foot. Which is usually a pretty fast and effective way to level out a fairway divot.

This photo shows the divot after it was filled and leveled.

Since the guys walk the entire length of the fairway they will usually bring two carts, park one at the beginning of the fairway and then they will take the second cart with the mix and start at the end of the fairway. This way when they finish filling the divots  they can  drive the cart they dropped off back to the cart with the mix, which is more efficient.

Fall Fairway Aerification

Our Fall Fairway Aerification immediately follows the greens and tee aerification. It usually takes between 5-6 weeks to get everything aerified and top dressed. There are several reasons why this process is important culturally including increased air flow to the roots, compaction relief, and removal of built up organic debris also known as 'thatch'. Because our fairways are predominantly bentgrass which is a high thatch producing grass, we verticut the fairways before the aerifier punched them. Verticutting is a way to thin out the turf as well as remove thatch, using vertical blades that are set the desired depth.

 Fairway Aerification includes the following steps ( flag the heads, verticutting the fairway, aerifing, cleaning up the plugs with a sweeper and Pro-Gators, blowing/dragging the fairway, gypsum application, sand topdressing, and the last step is to drag the sand in the open holes.) Most of the process are shown in photo's below.

After the hole has been flagged it is verticut before the aerifier gets there.

After the hole has been verticut the aefier then proceeds, this photo shows the operator going in a different direction on a mound in order to get a deeper plug.

After the hole has been aerified it is cleaned. This photo shows the tc-125 sweeper being pulled by a pro-gator. When the sweeper is full it is emptied in the back of a pro-gator, and the plugs are dumped in certain areas.

While the sweeper is picking up plugs there are a couple people using snow shovels to push cores out of low areas, which are either hand shoveled or picked up later with the sweeper.



Right behind the Sweeper is the blower which also has a drag mat attached, this picks up any smashed cores and debris and moves them to the pile for the sweeper to pick up.



This is one of the areas that the cores were dumped, this is a trail from 6 tee.

After the gypsum and sand are put down, the fairway is gone over with a drag mat. The objective is to fill the holes and spread the sand out evenly.

This is an example of an area that has been dragged already to one that has not.