I
f you really think about it, you could say that athletic
fields are the cool kids of turf management. People will
drive for hours, pay hundreds of dollars, and brave the
worst weather conditions imaginable just to get a seat
as close to them as possible. National and international
television broadcasts are fixated on them for hours at a time.
Heck, athletic fields have even been showing up fashionably
late to the turfgrass management party for decades.
Taking a quick look at the methods used to manage both
athletic fields and golf course greens, it is rather easy to pick up
on the similarities. When you glance a little closer, you'll find
that virtually every one of these methods was originally honed
by golf course superintendents across the world and then, typi-
cally years later, adopted by sports field managers everywhere.
Tactics such as stripe mowing, applying sand topdressing,
and core cultivation were at one time unique to putting green
management and have since become commonplace on virtually
every competition athletic field in the world; and because of it,
the quality of those fields has improved dramatically!
"So who's showing up next to the party?"
One common management technique used daily (and
sometimes more) by managers of golf course greens is routine
lightweight rolling. Although, it has yet to gain similar popu-
12 SportsTurf | October 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com
Field Science | By Nick Binder
Rolling with the cool kids
Research has proven that frequent and consis-
tent rolling can provide a faster (smoother)
putting surface, along with many other ben-
efits that may not seem quite as obvious
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