Grooming greens - Grain and brushes

One thing I have heard a lot of over the last 4 years while I have been here at LGCC is that "the greens are very true", "you have taken the break out of the greens", or "the greens break different now".  I believe what has happened is that due to our cultural practices, mainly brushing greens, we have removed a large portion of the grain created by the growth pattern of the turf on greens allowing the ball to roll and break according to the undulations on the green and not being influenced by the grain of the turf.  When I arrived here, one of the first things I did was mount brushes on the front of the walking greens mowers.

Brush mounted on the front of a walking greens mower

The predominant turf type on the greens grows in a lateral growth pattern as apposed to a vertical pattern.  This causes grain on the green as the leaf tissue is growing flat on the surface of the green as apposed to growing up. These brushes stand the grass up before the reel mows it off and gets an actual true cut at the height that we set the mower too.

We raise up the brushes and do not use them when we mow our clean-up pass going around the edge of the green.

Grain to the right of the lens cover, very little grain to the left of the lens cover

Above you can see the edge of the green, to the left of the lens cover there is very minimal grass that is laid over, to the right of the lens cover there is most of the grass laid over and growing laterally.

Greens turf growing laterally, stood up by my hand right behind the lens cover

In the above picture I rubbed my hand against the grain and you can see how high the grass stood up.  Even thought we set the height of cut on the mower at the desirable level, we are not getting that true height of cut out in the field.  This grain influences the ball as it rolls across the green - 1)  it slows down the ball because there is more surface area of leaf tissue that is causing friction against the ball as it rolls, 2)  it influences the ball to break one way or the other.  It could be holding a putt "up the hill" as it rolls along a side hill where it should actually break down the hill, or it could cause a ball to break more if the grain is going down the slope.

Same picture, farther back, very little grain to the left of the lens cover, other than the clean-up pass on the edge of the green

In the above picture, you see when I rub my hand against the grain we have longer grass on the outer edge where we do not use the brushes, but on the left side of the picture there is very little difference, meaning there is very little grass laid over that would of stood up, or very little grain.

This gives us faster greens as the ball is rolling on the tip of the leaf tissue and not on the side, it also allows the ball to break according to the slope of the green and not according the amount or direction of the grain caused by the lateral growth pattern of the turf. 

By using the brushes, the greens turf is stood up and then mowed clean, only leaving a small amount of grain around the perimeter of the green.  Also, changing our direction every single day will assure there will be minimal grain no matter what direction it is growing on any green.