Dirt was everywhere, and then it wasn’t. Where the potential for chaos loomed large, a remarkable calm settled. Trucks and golf carts and small tractors raced their engines and pulled their drag mats and cranked their blowers, but drivers of said vehicles never veered from a dedicated parade route.
It was golf course harmony to be admired. Synchronized aerification, let’s call it, and while Monday’s weather was vintage for golf course-visiting, it wasn’t conducive to golf-playing. Synchronized swimming – apologies, it’s now artistic swimming – might be an Olympic sport, but artistic aerification is a gold-medal necessity that goes vastly overlooked.
“Many golfers view the aerification process as an inconvenience,” said Don Hearn, “when in reality it is one of the most important practices that can be done to golf-playing surfaces.”
For decades a heralded superintendent at Weston GC and Vesper CC, Hearn later served as Executive Director of the Golf Course Superintendent’s Association of New England. He’ll be inducted into the Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame later this year, so he’s clearly in possession of a perspective that carries impact.
And aerification, he’ll tell you, matters. Twice a year, in fact.
“Though disruptive, it’s important to aerify for the long-term health of the playing surface.”
The benefits are easily explained, according to Rodney Hine, superintendent at Boston Golf Club in Hingham, Mass. “Aerification helps dilute thatch, it promotes smoothness, and it enables air to get down to the roots . . . if you don’t aerify the soil, you cannot maintain the turf.”
Ah, but herein arrives a collision of realities. “The best time to aerate is when turf is actively growing,” said Hine. That would be mid-May to the end of June, then again in late August to mid-October. The thing is, guess what also exists in those two windows? That’s right, a high demand for playing golf.
It's the battle superintendents in New England constantly wage, trying to schedule aerification necessities in and around the busiest golf times. Since they are not blessed to have the sort of benefit that many superintendents have in the south (they can aerate in August when play is way down), the assignment for those on the local scene is simple – do it quickly and disrupt play as little as possible.
Which brings us to the sort of artistic aerification demonstration that was witnessed at the Milton-Hoosic Club in Canton, Mass. Beneath an endless blue sky in pulsating heat – prime golf weather – superintendent Joel Cyr and his staff worked in synch with a crew from North Turf Sports & Golf Contractors.
No different than a day of golf in which you’d see groups on each of the nine holes, witnessing a labor-intensive aerification process had something going on at every turn of the head. The dirt plugs pulled from the fairways (Step 1) were gradually pushed into an organized pile by trucks using blowers (Step 2), then they were picked up another line of trucks (Step 3).
The aeration process is a huge labor-intensive exercise, much of it requiring good, old-fashioned lifting and carrying to clean off the greens.
As all that was going on, “we were running two Pro-Cores (aerifiers) on greens and approaches,” said Cyr, who oversaw a similar aerification process back in the spring.
Goodness, it was Broadway-like choreography.
Which is a segue of sorts into an introduction to a turf guy who knew a thing or two about Broadway productions. Tim Moraghan, the Director of Championship Agronomy at the USGA for 21 years, is now a Principal at ASPIRE Golf Consulting so he remains very close to the turf side of golf. He calls aeration “a necessity,” but then he quickly explains why he has a different word when he talks to clients and golf course officials who want help with hiring a new superintendent.
“I tell them you’re ‘cultivating’ the turf. ‘Aerating’ is poking holes and that’s what you’re doing, yes. But with the sand and the extra care you are ‘cultivating’ the turf.”
Check your handy dictionary because Moraghan nails it. What Cyr and Hine and so many of their colleagues are doing is “fostering the growth” of the turf, the definition of cultivating.
If Moraghan had his way, he’d ask golf clubs to change the way they set their golf calendars. “The way it’s done now is, the golf calendar is set, then the maintenance calendar (is fitted around it). That’s backwards. You should set the maintenance schedule and fit the golf calendar around it.”
He knows clubs aren’t likely to see it that way, but that’s how strongly he feels about the need to aerate and cultivate to maintain good turf conditions.
While it would be disingenuous to proclaim that watching the aerification process produces the same level of joy as does playing a round of golf, here’s a thought: It would enrich the soul of any golfer to be a spectator when the parade of trucks, blowers, carts, tractors, and drag mats plug hundreds of thousands of holds, then gather the plugs and toss down the top dressing that works its way into the turf.
The passion golfers have for the game is what you are closest to. But guess what? It is no deeper than the passion superintendents and their staffers have for the game and for providing the best stage possible.
“The demand for superior playing conditions has increased during my 40 years as a superintendent,” said Hearn. “This has created a lot of pressure to maintain golf turf at a high level. Golf course superintendents are highly educated; they do what they do to produce conditions at a high level with their available resources.”
Given the task of working the Hoosic’s nine holes – as opposed to those facilities with 36 or 27 or 18 holes – it was brilliant viewing to watch the swift transformation Monday. From dirt plugs spewed across acres of turf, to neat piles of brownness, to clean fairways flashing greenery, the performance was enlightening.
“It takes a lot of time and people to make the process proceed quickly and efficiently,” said Hearn, whose mission all those years were in line with what drives Hine and what pushed Cyr to move at such a wild pace Monday.
“We walk those gray areas to provide what’s best for the turf and what’s best for the golfers,” said Hine.
It’s a delicate balance, with a shorter golf season compounding the task and Hearn concedes that there have been times when “the disdain for the process has been loud and frequent.”
Moraghan has heard the complaints for years, how golfers might get their “aerated and cultivated” courses back a day later but they bemoan putting on bumpy greens. So one day as a panelist alongside heralded putting guru Stan Utley, Moraghan asked if there was a way to putt on recently-aerated greens.
“He said, ‘Focus on the putting stroke,’ ” said Moraghan, who was fascinated. “Stan said golfers get worked up trying to make a putt (on smooth greens), they forget to make a stroke. But he said on bumpy greens (you tell yourself you can’t make a putt) so you should just focus on the process of making a solid stroke.”
Utley’s thoughts are enlightening and they offer a slice of hope that golfers, should they focus on the big picture, might just be able to come to grips with the twice-a-season necessity called aeration.
When playing conditions are superb, as they are for so many long stretches, please give credit to those who make it possible.
To the superintendent and those on the grounds crew who took on an aeration process not because it’s fun, but because it’s necessary. It creates a lot of dirt, but in an artistic and synchronized way.
