A decade ago, a greenkeeper cutting greens down to 2mm for long periods would have been considered, by most, to be insane. Conventional wisdom at that time was that such an aggressive cut would severely stress the grass plant. Normal cutting heights were around the 4mm mark and, if an adventuresome greenkeeper dared to go lower, 3mm would be the limit. But, times have changed.


An advocate of the short cut, Greg Evans, Course Manager at Ealing Golf Club, has been maintaining greens at 2mm for the last six years with outstanding success. In his opinion, cutting at this height does not overly stress the plant, but can actually be beneficial to the grass.


In this article Greg explains his rationale for this new strategy and reveals maintenance practices that can sustain the “short cut”


SHORT CUT to better golf!


“The disturbance theory, for one, has called for verticutting to be reduced or even eliminated. I think this is a grave mistake”


Greg Evans, Course Manager, Ealing Golf Club


BEFORE I became a Course Manager, I was the sort of golfer that greenkeepers hated. I demanded fast true greens with no excuses. You could often find these greens on sandier soils such as links or heathland but, as soon as you came inland to parkland clay based courses, the speed slowed down considerably. The main reason for this was that sandier links type soils produced the finer grasses such as fescue and bent whilst the clay based parkland course had poa dominated surfaces. The same height of cut for these grasses will produce different speeds. If you were to cut a green at 5mm fescue would produce the fastest surface, followed by bent with poa producing slow ‘snakey’ ball rolls. But why do golfers prefer fast greens? Fast


greens, if maintained correctly, do produce the best ball roll. The slower the ball roll the more drag or resistance encountered. I remember playing the London Golf Club when it first opened. The greens that day were the best I had ever played on. The ball never left the surface and rolled true and straight. They were also the quickest greens I had ever played. Coincidence? Absolutely not! A fast green increases the skill level required for putting. With advances in club technology,


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