That time of the year loathed by all golfers is here. Now is when golfers across the land swear at every greens keeper and superintendent in town. By now or within the next several weeks every course will undergo aerification as courses ready themselves for the summer season.

    Nearly every golfer despises this practice, including myself. It always seems that just when the course is at its best that is the time for major work to be done. However, when you look at the long-term benefits it’s easy to understand why aerification is a necessary evil.

    Like changing the oil on your car, aerification is a form of preventative maintenance. Aerification is an integral part any successful golf course management plan. The job of every superintendent is not only to make the course look fabulous today, but also tomorrow and on down the road.

    It’s important for everyone to understand how meaningful aerification is to producing healthy turf and a healthy golf course in the future. Aerification achieves three major objectives. First it relieves soil compaction. Secondly it provides a method for improving soil mixture around the highest part of the grass root system. Finally, it reduces or prevents the build-up of thatch.

    When golfers by the thousands walk on the greens, and drive carts on the fairways, the traffic causes the soil near the surface to compact into a single, hard layer. Over time, the soil becomes so tightly compacted that water and air have a difficult time penetrating the surface to reach the root system of the grass. Once this begins to occur, the roots decline, the turf becomes weak and disease and other problems begin to appear. Aerification pulls plugs from the compacted soil allowing an infusion of life-sustaining water and air to reach the roots and bring about a resurgence of growth.

    To give you an idea of just how compacted the soil becomes, pick up a few of the plugs that you may find laying around after the superintendent is done. Try to break them or crush them with your fingers. They feel like little plugs of cement. Now imagine air and water trying to penetrate that hard layer to reach the roots.

    On the greens, the holes are filled with a sand-like topdressing that drains well and resists compaction. By introducing this sandy topdressing periodically, a superintendent improves the green’s top layer and helps avoid the expense of someday needing to rebuild or renovate the green.

    On the fairways, the growth of turf adds to the protective layer of organic material on the surface. This layer, called thatch, is an accumulation of dead grass, leaves, stems and roots. A strong and healthy thatch layer helps the turf recover faster from divots, cart tracks, and helps to prevent the intrusion of insects and disease.

    The newest aerification machines use smaller tongs to pull plugs from the greens. These smaller holes help the green to heal faster and allow the superintendent to get a better dispersion of topdressing. It usually takes a couple of weeks and a few days or nights of steady rain for the course to fully recover.

    Unfortunately for us our courses are currently in their driest state in many months. The lack of rain along with searing heat has wreaked havoc with our turf. To keep our healthy and in playable shape over the hot summer, superintendents need to start now by getting the grass as lush and happy as possible. Personally, I’ll happily trade a couple weeks of putts that bounce a few more times if it means I get to play on green grass all summer long.