bobble test

Chris Tritabaugh has been writing an extraordinarily interesting series of blog posts. The topic, broadly, is putting green management and putting green performance. That’s a big topic, obviously. Chris, on his blog, has been taking a route through it that describes what he’s been doing and what he’s been measuring.

Chris Tritabaugh and I met to review the OM246 test results from samples collected in October 2021 at Hazeltine National Golf Club. We did this as a livestream episode of ATC Office Hours, which is available for watching or listening at your leisure.

I’ve used many different methods to assess the quality of ball roll on putting greens. This is not the distance the ball rolls—that measurement is commonly called the speed of the greens.

This chart shows almost a full season of bobble test measurements from Hazeltine National GC. I discussed measurements of smoothness and trueness of ball roll in this video, and I mentioned that I use and recommend the bobble test as a way to make these measurements.

When Cam Shaw wrote with a question about measuring smoothness and trueness, he mentioned that he’d searched my blog and didn’t find anything. “Wow,” I thought, “have I really written nothing about this?