Soft or Stiff?

After work, nothing feels better than grabbing your clubs, putting on a fresh collared shirt and heading to the golf course. Come early spring and fall it gets dark early the sun is the only thing standing in the way between nine and eighteen holes. Especially around the slow times of the season, warming up becomes a great debate around this time. Walking on cold to the tee can have it's advantages and disadvantages. If you do have time, a quick stretch could assist in not pulling any muscles. Even a few more practice swings can loosen up the main muscles needed to swing the club. If time is of the essence , tee up and swing away. Knowing how to change your swing without a warm up can really help in some situations where time is scarce . We all know we can't make it to every tee time half an hour before to really loosen up. Doing this may help for the odd occasion that as your pulling in the parking lot, your group is ready to go to their first drives. Green speeds can be another factor of your game if you decide to skip warm up. The fall and spring speeds tend to be slower, but if the superintendent is really good, the speeds can be more slippery than you think. If your a good ball striker and stretching isn't a necessity, a few putts on the putting green could help save a few strokes on the card. No matter how much time you have or don't have, consider prior to teeing off warming up is in your schedule. Photo: http://selectgroupre.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/pace-of-play-not-an-issue-in-speed-golf/

Always Stuck in the Traps

The one hazard that every golfer hates to be in and every employee dislikes taking care of are bunkers. Most superintendents overlook bunker maintenance, but it plays a key part in the aesthetics of the course and play. If not maintained properly,  bunkers can require an extensive amount of repair. Simple bunker practices are easily forgotten in training and can become very time consuming come mid-season or before a big tournament. Bunker maintenance, I have found, is usually given to high school students and minimal training is provided. I have witnessed training where employees have been taught to rake the bunker up towards the edge and pull back down. If not done properly, this can create bumps on the edges of the bunkers, the causation of the bumps is from the rake being dug into the lip when pulling down and near the bottom when being pushed up. When it comes to bunker raking, you don't push the sand, you overturn it. Raking is just to remove foot prints and flatten high and low spots. Unless fixing a low or high spot, you only use the weight of the rake to overturn the sand, moving around as little sand as possible. Raking edges should just be a light push up, not moving any actual sand, keeping the preferred 1" lip. This keeps the bunker face firm, as you are not getting the teeth too deep and breaking up the compacted sand on the edges. Raking out differently everyday helps with sand being moved to one side after months. The sand pro should enter and exit from each bunker differently everyday, in attempt to eliminate accumulation of sand in the same area. This will save humps from being created and save bunker faces from the aggressive tires on the machines. Hopefully these practices will help save time when it comes to bunker maintenance, keep the course looking good and enjoyable to play out of. Photo :http://www.oc1895.net/2010_08_01_archive.html