Heavy sanding of greens

[dazza78]

My course has been heavily sanded, and as a newbie.. I am not sure what the purpose of it is.  I imagine it's for winter, but how exactly does it protect the green?

[caniac6]

Was it aerified first? If so, sand is used to fill the holes. That changes the soil profile, and allows air water and fertilizer to get to the roots. The sand also helps smooth the greens when applied properly, and draged in. Our course aerified using smaller tines, and did several light top derssings, and the greens recovered much faster vs the traditional way of doing one heavy top dressing following aerification.

[LagShaft]

My guess would be that they aerated them. They usually let them get a little bit shaggy first aswell, but they should be back in shape in a week or two. 

[dazza78]

Yep they were aerated thanks for the insight!

[mcanadiens]

I played a course the other week, where they claimed to have aerated just four days ago using some sort of machine that micro-perforated the greens.There was sand but no noticeable holes. On that day, the greens rolled really slowly, but were very true.

On the other hand, the home course punched them three weeks ago and they are still horrible. Putting yesterday was like trying to roll a ball down a porcupine's back. 

[LagShaft]

I played a course the other week, where they claimed to have aerated just four days ago using some sort of machine that micro-perforated the greens.There was sand but no noticeable holes. On that day, the greens rolled really slowly, but were very true.

On the other hand, the home course punched them three weeks ago and they are still horrible. Putting yesterday was like trying to roll a ball down a porcupine's back. 

I hear you the last two times I've played were the day after they punched the Greens and the day they were punching the fairways...a couple weeks earlier I played a tournament four days after they punched the fairways on a different course It was almost better to hit out of the ruff stuff.  Gotta love this time of year.

[Pendragon]

Yep they were aerated thanks for the insight!

It's typically done twice a year...in the spring, then again in the fall.

[rkim291968]

Good, I thought it was just my home course that does the heavy sanding.   My club does this once a year for aerating the greens. (Other times in the year, they do lighter version of aeration without so much sand.)  When they do the heavy sanding, I can't see any green spot on green for the 1st few days and we have to play elsewhere.   The effect of the heavy sanding lasts for 3 weeks as the sand gradually recede.  

[dave s]

This is interesting.  Just played a round on a course on the NC coastal region.  The greens were heavily sanded, but I didn't see any aeration holes or plugs.  The greens were Bermuda grass. Not saying they weren't aerated, just didn't seen any plug marks, big or small.

The result was ROCK HARD greens that putted like a granite counter top.  These were the quickest greens I've seen since playing Firestone South where the big boys play the Bridgestone Invitational.

dave  

[dkolo]

I've had courses sand greens later in the day after heavy traffic just to smooth them out. I also always had the experience of sanding causing putts to play extremely fast, which was a counter-intuitive mistake you only make once, haha. That led to an unfortunate case where the 18th got sanded right before we hit into it, and I overcautiously 3 putted my very nice eagle putt. In summary, I hate sanded greens.

[robertford]

I think as you are a beginner you will feel like this only it will be became comfort as you got experience.