Chad Allen

I collect a ton of data. In Indiana, this time of year is what I call data sheet season. I’m building spreadsheets like there is no tomorrow. Data is a key component to what we do here. It’s not the only component. The art of greens keeping is not dead: it’s actually even more alive and vibrant. This tool (the GS3) allows you to take those variables out and allows you to look at everything with a more objective eye, instead of just saying “well, they feel good today.” I’m a big numbers guy and I want to know why they do that. The long and the short is, yes, and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.

Right around January of 2024? I think the USGA was tired of me saying “Can I get this thing??” When it went live, I’ll bet I was number one or two who purchased it. It’s been in our arsenal ever since.

First and foremost, the foundation of our data collection is clipping yield. We have three greens on the front, three greens on the back that we collect clipping yield from. Whoever is doing course setup that day will pick up the buckets behind the mowers, if we do mow. This year, I did all of the data collection when it came to the GS3. That will change coming up in this next year. We have a younger crew and getting them involved will be great. So after dropping and rolling the ball and putting in the clipping yields, we’ll take a look at the numbers and come up with a plan for the next day and next week’s fertility program.

Yes and no. As we transition through the year, things become smoother, firmer, so you lose your spots. This year, it was really important for me to try to find what spots I could use at what time of the year because we don’t have a lot of undulation on our greens. It’s a Pete Dye design, so there’s a bunch of double breaks. So you’re having a hard time finding areas that are long enough and big enough that you can do. In the perfect world, yes. And I don’t do it necessarily where we are measuring the clipping yields. We have a couple greens that are our go-to.

Also, I’m a big firm guy. We were pretty soft before I took over. The course was being over-watered a lot. Our members were asking how can we get these greens firmer. Smoothness, trueness, firmness: if you can get those three things balanced out, then the speed will be there.

To me, smoothness is king. That’s the number one thing. And in order of importance to me, it’s smoothness, firmness, and trueness. I do feel like smoothness and trueness overlap each other a bit. I think if you have a smooth, firm surface, you’re really doing to keep your email box empty from complaints.

What I do is send out a weekly email to membership. Before the GS3, I was a little more persistent in explaining what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and how that correlates to what they are seeing on the golf course. Most of my communications go to our golf pro and our director of golf. Because he’s the front-line person and he falls on the grenades for me. And sees the membership much more often than I do. I give him access to DEACON and he can take a look at it. I worked really hard to explain to him what he is seeing and he can relate that to the members.

We roll a lot: I do a lot of rolling. I find that it keeps the smoothness, trueness, and firmness pretty stationary. Of course, Mother Nature has the ultimate say-so for what we’re doing. Rolling has to been shown to reduce dollar spot pressure and that’s something that we deal with a lot out here. We’re trying to stay as consistent as possible. And we find that if we roll, we might lose two or so inches of speed, but that’s not noticeable to your average golfer. What is noticeable is the ball jumping and bouncing and leaving huge ball marks. Rolling is a key component to what we do out here.

I know that there is a big push to limit the amount of topdressing you are doing. But for us, we’ve had to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing, due to our course profile. Which is we need to topdress more often to keep these things firm, especially in August and September, which is when humidity starts to happen for us and things don’t dry down. So, yes, we do topdress. And we topdress every two weeks. Does it affect playability? Very minimally.

This year, we went half-inch solid tines in the spring. We opened a little bit earlier and we did want to get the course recovered a little bit quicker. So we did track how quickly it took to recover. I think it was seven days and we were back to sub three smoothness. We also do a lot of venting out here and I’ll vent a couple times a month with needle tines. When we started doing it, everyone was like “well the greens are messed up”. But you’d never notice it when it comes to numbers-wise. So once we explained that and showed those numbers, those conversations died down. I don’t track it in the fall, because our play really slows down.

I don’t know if it’s changed how we manage it, but it’s changed how we see it. It allows us to see what the performance metrics tell us, instead of just with our eyes. Have we adjusted based on the metrics we get from this? Sure we have. We’re not as anxious to get out there and mow and roll. We have over 200 bunkers out here. That’s a man-hour killer. So we have to focus in on the bunkers. And knowing the numbers where they’re at, from the previous day or week, allows us to be comfortable on a Wednesday we can go out there and rake some bunkers because they got an inch of rain. And we can do that comfortably and not be nervous that a member is going to be upset that the greens are not performing as they should. I know that they are because I know the data and I know what to expect from them. It has changed how we do things, but it’s more about allocating resources towards other areas of the golf course that, for us, are much more prominent. The greens are where the money is at: that’s never going to change. But when you have the amount of bunkers we have, we have to tend to them. And we know the greens are doing as well as they did two days ago.

Sure. Our bunkers are better than they’ve ever been. And that’s been because we’ve been able to focus more in on them. We’re able to take those resources that we would have used by dissecting the greens and we have the confidence in what we are seeing. And we’re able to move those resources to somewhere else. I don’t have to be on the greens all the time either. That’s what I love about the GS3 and DEACON. Of course, the more data you have, the better you’ll be. But I’m confident in the numbers I’ve seen the day before. And If I want to skip something, I can do that and know that we’ll be really, really good.

I would handle that in two different ways. The first way is that greens are very personal to superintendents. So the last thing you want to tell them is that their greens aren’t good enough and could be better. So you have to listen to them. But if they’re saying, “hey, I want to take these greens to the next level”, I would say “ask me questions.” Let me show you what’s going on with this ball. Because I can promise you what you’re doing is working, and it’s working great. But if you want to have the utmost confidence in what you’re doing, and see trends and how that makes a difference, this tool is second to none for that.