It’s what you don’t that is important when preparing a golf course to handle summer stresses. It has been only 5 weeks since we’ve completed our deep-tine aeration of the putting surfaces. And the bentgrass roots are taking advantage of the loosened soil, refreshed soil air and paths of least resistance. While changing hole locations yesterday, we observed these bundles of white, healthy roots hanging out several inches from the bottom of the 6-in soil plugs.
Am I excited to see this? Yes. In 22 years golf course experience, I have never seen such an aggressive, happy root system on a putting surface in early May. And what even more exciting, is that we should have another 4-6 weeks of good root growing soil temperatures.
