As short as, 4-6 years of topdressing with a fine sand on a 2 week basis throughout the growing season in the Great Lakes Region, over what would be considered a coarse USGA construction sand has produced a very unstable surface prone to foot-printing and tire tracking after this fine sand surface profile is disturbed with hole punching practices.

The only way, long term, I think you could use finer sand in a weekly to bi-weekly program over coarse construction would be to aggressively spring and fall double Graden, 1" deep, coarser sand, coefficient 2+, along with double DryJect Maximusing the same coarse sand in. This would effect both the surface horizontal 1" you have been fine topdressing all season and also produce vertical drainage column conduits to the lower profile.

You need the right equipment, Graden Sand Fill, DryJect Maximus, topdressers, the right sands, tested out at a certified lab, a lot of labor spring and fall and a owner or board of directors that will allow this major work to be done spring and fall. $'s and cooperation needed.

excellent points dave. especially about the cooperation required to remedy. i have seen more tire tracks on greens these days than ever before.

Frank,

Our greens are one of those mentioned that went with a coarse and "packable" sand. Very coarse in our rootmix is 11% and the co-efficient of uniformity is just over 3. We have tried topdressing with this same sand, but just end up picking up the v. coarse particles. We now use a USGA spec topdressing sand, which has a co-efficient of uniformity of 2.1, which is nicely compatible with our rootmix and seems to work into the canopy of our A-4 pretty well. I would actually say very well, mechanic would say pretty well.

In my opinion, the unintended consequences of this are a total pore space of 40%, with a lot of capillary pore space. Due to this, once the greens "flush" the moisture left behind in the capillary pore space is higher and sticks around longer, than I would like.

Great podcast with Norm, keep them coming.