Busy organizations rely on a carefully coordinated calendar of events to meet the needs of their customers and avoid conflicts. This is especially true when it comes to golf courses and the need to coordinate maintenance activities with a busy tournament schedule. One of the most contentious issues is scheduling core aeration and coordinating this activity with the various special events at the course.
Most golf courses have adopted the recommended practice of establishing dates for core aeration at least one year in advance and then scheduling tournaments and special events after the agronomic calendar is established. Although they see the dates for aeration on the calendar, golfers don’t know how long it will take for the greens to ‘get good again’. Claremont Country Club in Oakland, California, developed a simple color-coded calendar that provides a visual indication of the relative putting quality following disruptive maintenance practices such as core aeration. Details of the system are as follows:
- Dates for core aeration are listed on the club calendar one year in advance.
- Red shading is used to designate the day/ days of the actual process and the subsequent days where putting quality is significantly impacted.
- Yellow shading is used to designate days when putting quality is partially impacted. The greens are playable, but there may be a few remaining aeration holes that have not fully recovered.
- Green shading is used to indicated that the greens are fully recovered and in good condition.
With the visual impact of the color coding system, there are no surprises, and golfers and tournament coordinators have a better idea of when the greens will be back to normal for their special event.
Source: Pat Gross, pgross@usga.org