Painting hole locations is a practice that comes from televised golf because the visibility of a hole location improves when painted white. This certainly makes sense for T.V., but is it necessary for hole locations to be painted for daily play at your course?
Even though it may not take very long to paint one hole location, this task must be completed 18 times whenever the holes are changed. For the sake of discussion, let’s say it takes one minute to paint each new hole location and scrape the paint from the edge of the previous hole location. This adds 18 minutes to course setup each day. If the hole location is changed every day from April 1 through October 31 – a total of 214 times – this would result in approximately 64 hours being dedicated to painting hole locations in a season. Even if holes are changed six days a week over the same period – a total of 184 times – painting hole locations would still add approximately 55 hours to course setup.
It is common for the superintendent, assistant superintendent, or one of the more experienced members of the agronomic team to complete course setup each day because of how important this task is to the golf experience. Having a key member of the staff spending 50-60 hours each year painting hole locations is a significant time investment that could be better spent on other tasks.
While Course Consulting Service visits typically focus on agronomics, topics like painting hole locations are common during these visits and it is always interesting to participate in these discussions. For daily play, this practice is purely aesthetic and it is a matter of opinion whether it should be performed. Each facility is different, and ultimately decision-makers must work together to determine what is best. A fair compromise is to paint hole locations for special events without committing to completing this practice every day.
Central Region Agronomists:
Paul Jacobs, agronomist – pjacobs@usga.org
Zach Nicoludis, agronomist – znicoludis@usga.org