In a previous post I showed how changes to our mowing and rolling frequency cut our equipment use costs on our greens in half. This post will discuss how those changes impacted our green speed.
It's great to be able to cut costs but it also has to take the course conditions into account. My philosophy has always been that you need to keep conditions the same if you are cutting costs. This is, of course, unless you are facing a substantial financial crisis where some loss of playability is justified. Either way, if you have the option, try to keep conditions the same or better if improving efficiency.
I consider myself lucky as our greens have some extreme slopes so our green speed is limited by topography not ego. We even skip rolling on a few greens to keep speeds lower because they become unplayable at speeds over 11'. Our daily target is 10 with a low of 9 and a high of 11. This is based off golfer feedback. The chart below shows the average green speeds per month per year. We generally only measure stimp on days where the greens are maintained. If it's raining super hard, frosty or snowy, we don't measure the green speed because golfers ain't golfing. We also don't measure green speeds at 1pm but we don't get too many complaints about slow greens in the afternoon ;)
As you can see, speeds have gone up slightly in 2022 despite the cost to get those green speeds being cut in half.
Here's a figure you've probably never seen before(maybe because it's useless haha). The cost per foot of green speed per day. We went from $20 per foot per day in 2019 down to less than $10 per foot per day in 2022. BAM!
So when someone says doing more with less, this is what they are talking about! We aren't working harder. We are actually working less and getting better results. This is what they call "working smarter." This is the best combination and something that is exceedingly challenging to find in any industry.
With this super cool data I can break down our green speeds further to see how they differ on days where we mow only, roll only, and mow and roll combined. Remember that there is no control plot here so the differences between each will likely be much smaller than you might see in other research on the subject.
The table below shows the summary for the various greens prep combinations;
Generally speaking, rolling results in speeds higher than average where mowing only results in speeds below average. Cool.
I'm not someone to pass up a good ratio so here is the roll only stimp vs mow only stimp. Numbers greater than 1 are where rolling only results in a higher stimp.
I think it is kind of cool to see that we get more bang for our buck with the roller in the winter months vs the summer months. I wonder why? Could it be due to the lower growth rate or maybe it's due to the changes in the plant physiology in the winter? I'm thinking leaf stiffness or something.
Here's the mow and roll vs the roll only stimp. By rolling daily and mowing every other day, we essentially get the same speeds day to day with slightly better speeds on days where we mow and roll vs roll only.
Moral of the story here is that we have data to show that the changes in how we maintain our putting greens have saved us money without compromising course conditions and if anything, things have improved. While some might say that this is obvious, I think it is important to understand how changes to maintenance strategies might influence playability and the cost of getting those conditions. You might have the intuition that you are making improvements but good luck communicating your guess to owners or board members.
