A Picture is Worth a Thousand...Flags???

The picture to the left is a snapshot of 5 canyon green with every improperly or un-repaired ball mark flagged. When I embarked on this project, I knew there would be a lot of ball marks, but never would have believed that I did not have enough irrigation flags to do the entire green. We ran out of flags after putting out approximately 450 and we didn't even get half of the green done!

You know that this makes for a very bumpy putt, but there are also a couple of consequences that you may not relate to ball marks which are topdressing and fertilizing. Everybody hates when we put sand on the greens, but topdressing helps fill/ smooth the ball marks. The other item players don't like are slow greens. Every time we spray greens, we have to put a little bit of nitrogen in the tank just to help get recovery in the ball marks. When we get the grass growing that much, it makes for slower putts.

To the right is an illustration of how to properly fix a ball mark.

Click on the image to enlarge. Any questions on how to fix a ball mark can be directed to the pro shop and I would be glad to give any lessons. Also if you're interested, follow this link to read a research study done by Michigan State University on properly fixing ball marks and what tools are the best.

In closing, do you think you could avoid the ball marks and make the putt pictured below?