Aerification

Also: aeration · coring · punching greens

Removing or displacing soil cores to relieve compaction, exchange thatch for sand, and get air and water into the root zone.

Hollow tines pull a core and physically remove organic matter; solid tines fracture without removing anything; needle tines vent with minimal disruption. Which one you're doing changes both the recovery time and how loudly the golfers complain.

It is the most unpopular thing a superintendent does and the most necessary. The whole argument for it is invisible — compaction and organic accumulation are not things a golfer can see until the summer they cause a failure.

What it means for a small course

Publish the dates as far ahead as you can and put them where members will actually see them. Most of the anger is about surprise, not about the holes.

Fairway is built by people who had to learn all of this.

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