Chasing the Numbers 2024! Greens Speed & Smoothness Annual Summary

This is becoming one of my favourite blog posts to write each year and as you may have guessed by that opening, I have good things to say!

In late June of this year I posted this blog discussing how we were having a hard time hitting our smoothness goals and laid out a few plans to try and get us back on track. While our average speed for May & June was 10’ 11”, our average smoothness was 8.5. Yes these numbers both exceed our daily target of between 10’ - 10’ 6” speed and equal to or greater that 8 smoothness however, our greens were so good through March & April (11’ 2” & 8.9) that we set the bar very high! I can tell you that all the items discussed in the previous post were enacted over the last couple months and let’s see where they landed us now:

Ooooooooooo how about those numbers eh?!?!? A slight reduction in speed averaging 10’ 9” through the last two months but average smoothness of 9.2!!! A little less fast and a fair bit more smooth, I’m pretty sure any golfer would take that deal.

Even more cool, lets compare to 2023 July & August where we exceeded 10’ 6” 40% of the time to 2024 where we exceeded 10’ 6” 72% of the time. But wait there’s more! In 2023 July & August we were 9 or higher in smoothness 65% of the time compared to 91% in 2024 July & August. 91% !!!!!

A reminder that while we still track the numbers, I do exclude days where the data is affected by either weather (rainfall) or the surface has been disturbed by a cultural practice (sand top dressing). The last week has been quite wet (including todays’ first round of Club Championships) so you won’t have seen perfect greens through the last week. We can only do so many things and controlling the weather is thankfully not my responsibility 😉.

Like my post title in late June, the numbers don’t lie. Not only have we made improvements on May & June of this year, we are also seeing better numbers than 2023, which itself was better than 2022. Things just keep getting better!