Morning Maintenance

Priority is given to greenkeepers carrying out important maintenance work on greens during a specified morning of each week during the main growing (as well as playing) season from April to September. Golfers would either have to wait until a green had been completed before being allowed to play on a green, or until the greenkeeper waved them on to play, whilst still completing the work. Typically, this might be scheduled as being up to 0900 or 1000 on a Monday. The work that would be carried out would typically be aeration, some pesticide application, scarification, top-dressing, or verticutting, which can be more disruptive to play and is ideally completed without interruption from players on each green.

Depending on equipment available, it might be possible to complete full coverage of 18-greens with an 0500 start for either verticutting, scarification, pesticide application or aeration, although ideally two items of machinery would be available to make this more manageable, otherwise the work would need to be staggered over two consecutive designated sessions. Top-dressing (more as a light dusting) is more time consuming and for many courses this might be carried out over 9-greens one week and then the other 9 the following week, with another permutation being 6 or 3 greens per session, with the latter resulting in greens being lightly top-dressed on a 6-week basis. This will be quite acceptable for many situations, as some greens will only be top-dressed in spring and late summer / early autumn as part of traditional top-dressing practices.

The actual work carried out within a morning maintenance session will depend on several factors, including the desired quality of the surface, available budget and number of rounds being played, as well as prevailing weather and ground conditions.