As course manager at The Mere Golf Resort and Spa near Manchester, England, Gwynn Davies knows a thing or two about managing Poa annua. He also knows how its seedheads can make it difficult to maintain consistent putting conditions across a single green not to mention throughout an entire golf course.The Parry Meter, a new device manufactured by the British firm iGreenKeeper, could be the next tool for superintendents looking for a way to measure putting surface smoothness and trueness. Developed by greenkeeper and inventor Karl Parry, the Parry Meter is a self-contained, maintenance-free, mobile app-driven device that can record as many as 148 surface readings per second, or more than 18,000 per green.
The iPhone-only app allows the operator to customize settings based on the green that is being measured, local rainfall amounts, current surface conditions, green speed, maintenance levels of each green and height of cut. The phone then plugs directly into a receptacle on the four-wheeled unit. The unit then utilizes the smart-phones internal gyroscope and accelerometer to measure surface smoothness and trueness, with data fed through the app and displayed on the phone?s screen.
"The Parry Meter allows me to make management decisions based on real-time activity on the surfaces like the impact of Poa seed heads, seeing a decline in performance and then acting on my verticutting or brushing," Davies said on the Parry Meter Web site.
While serving as the course manager at Denbigh Golf Club in England, Davies conducted a study in 2012 to quantify how frequency of clip affects surface smoothness and putting conditions utilizing a Jacobsen Eclipse 322 outfitted with 11-blade reels. By using the Parry Meter he was able to show in research conducted on three greens at Denbigh that increasing frequency of clip could improve surface smoothness by up to 8.5 percent.
The iGreenKeeper firm is planning to launch the Parry Meter next month at 10 locations throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. Final pricing is still in the works, and availability here could come later this year.