Pitchmarks, ball marks whatever you want to call them. We all leave them from all kinds of places on the course and they can impact our score if we don’t do our part to fix them. You might think it’s just on full shots, but they can creep up on pitches, bunker blasts, and even flops.
Here’s a sign we see all too often at golf courses:
Per the USGA’s research, unfixed pitch marks invite weeds to grow through them, compromising the putting surface. Not doing your part to maintain the course can take the greens at your local course out of commission for several weeks or months in the worst-case scenario. Imagine having an important four-footer to win your weekly game and hitting a patchy spot that kills the speed of your putt or bumps it offline. Many of us have had it happen and just seeing the spot before the putt can put doubt in the mind as we look to execute the shot.
It’s interesting to consider courses that get well over 130 rounds played on average each day. Take Rancho Park Golf Course for example, which is said to be the busiest golf course in the United States with 100,000 rounds played annually and about 274 per day. The 1,040 impressions most definitely doubles to 2,000 with the significant increase in daily rounds. Packed courses like Rancho tend to require an extra level of care to maintain the course’s surfaces, impacting budgets and the quality of course conditions as a result of its golfers. Rancho is one of the great gems of U.S. municipal golf courses as it previously hosted the Los Angeles Open on the PGA Tour 17 times with notable winners that include Arnold Palmer, Charlie Sifford, and Billy Casper.
We invite you to think about your home course the next time you get a little lazy about fixing pitch marks. Think about your golf course like a national park with trash that accumulates. If the trash isn’t picked up then the park will become less over time and could be lost. Preserve the beauty and the function the course serves: for the love of golf.
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