Teaching the bobble test video
I made a video about the bobble test with Queen. She knows about green speed, and she was familiar with the Holing Out Test using the Greenstester, but she didn’t know how to do the bobble test. In this video, I taught her how to do the test.
We ended up discussing whether stimpmeter measurements alone are sufficient to assess smoothness and trueness of ball roll, and why I used to think the Holing Out Test was the ideal way to do this.
When you have the time, please watch the video and listen to our discussion about this measurement. There is so much work done to create putting surfaces. It makes sense to measure the results that are produced, at least once a week, so that the playing conditions can be known for the year (or season). When those playing conditions are known, the work can be adjusted in the future to have better control of playing conditions.
I recommend taking about one hour per week to record these data:
Stimpmeter (green speed) measurement on three greens.
Bobble test measurement on the same three greens, measured at the same time as the green speed.
Record the green firmness as being too soft (1), fine (2), or too hard (3).
If you have a soil moisture meter, it makes sense to record what the soil water content is too.