SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/517437
W hen one speaks of dragging an infield skin, there are actually two different drag- ging operations that that person may be speaking about. They may be scarifying the infield skin using some type of a penetrating nail drag or they could be finish drag- ging or float dragging the field to give it a smooth, blemish-free finish. There are several types of each drag available on the market. Which type of drag you use depends on what you are trying to accomplish, the type of infield soils, or whether you have a topdressing on the infield skin surface. Let's look at scarifying drags first. The purpose of these types of drags is to loosen the top ¼" to ½" layer of material at the surface of the infield. Remember, a metal baseball cleat is only 3/8" long so you really don't want to penetrate much deeper. Excessive penetration when scarifying an infield can result in too loose of a surface on the skin of the infield, compromising the traction that the ballplayer desires. Too much loose material at the surface will also affect the playability of a ground ball as excess loose infield soil and/or topdressing will rapidly take the energy out of a ground ball and cause it to stay down and not take the proper hop that a fielder would predict. With that information in mind, you will want a nail drag that is not too heavy or aggressive to prevent scarifying too deep. Lightweight nail drags with the ability to add weight or down-pressure to the unit should deeper penetration be desired tend to be the most versatile. This allows for adjustment according to infield soil moisture conditions. The other feature to pay attention to is the spike or nail used to actually penetrate into the infield skin. A finer textured spike, like a 40 penny nail, is desired for daily infield mainte- nance. Aggressive spring tines are also a good fine textured option for scarifica- 26 SportsTurf | June 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT INFIELD DRAGS FACILITY & OPERATIONS Editor's note: We asked professional groundskeepers these questions about what infield drags they use and why, before, after and during games: What type of infield drag(s) do you use before and after games? Why do you prefer that type? Do you use something dif- ferent during a game and if so what and why? We also asked Paul Zwaska, director of education & strategic initiatives for Beacon Athletics, for some basic information on the different types of drags, which leads off the article: Scarifying drag