Last week’s post on green-speed has raised a few questions, a lot of them along the lines of
“How can we afford to cut the green 7 days a week?”
In the introduction to my book Performance Bowling Greens I speak about the danger of traditions.
Traditions are funny things, because they don’t actually seem to need to be very old, or for that matter very sensible for them to take hold; they only need a bit of support from a few people and Bingo! They are “new” traditions.
One of the quirkiest? Cutting the green on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, usually early in the morning. Why has this become a tradition at many clubs?
Well it probably boils down to cost mainly and perhaps convenience and possibly a little bit of misunderstanding of the growth pattern of greens.
Following this cutting plan those playing on Monday evening, Tuesday, Wednesday evening, Thursday, Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday are not seeing or playing the green at anything near its best!
That leaves a lot of potentially dissatisfied customers!
So in answer to the question at the beginning, another question:
How can you afford not to?
However, in Bowling Club Turnaround terms remember dissatisfaction can actually be a good thing as it gives you a huge opportunity to move things to a better state and make an overall positive gain from an otherwise negative situation.
Hi John, It is certainly the case in many clubs that there is an attitude of ”its aye been done that way” & its a very difficult attitude to fight against. This does not only apply to cutting the green of course. One half way house to that is to cut 3 days and extra cuts when there is a cup match os similar, otherwise -yes the playing surface will not be at it’s best but there has to be some compromise to meet each situation. Regards, Alex Park Castings B C
Our green has traditionally been cut three times a week.
Now that our revival is well underway we now have 4 members who are earmarked as ‘the green team’ for the coming season.
It is planned that they will each cut the green once a week. This will be supplemented by our regular Saturday work party who will also cut the green plus any other treatments as required.
We have always had Saturday work parties but ‘the green team’ are members who can’t attend on Saturdays
So, 5 times is better than 3…….here’s hoping!!!