Bowling Green Performance Standards (A)

A range of performance standards can and should be used to manage a bowling green and these can help provide for well informed decisions on the effective and efficient use of resources needed to maintain the green to meet the needs of the club. Assuming funds are limited and/or they are wanting to be spent wisely, then the use of performance standards is actually a key aspect of good bowling green management.

Whilst a complete range of performance standards can be utilised, it is often desirable to select several key ones, especially in the first stages of their implementation, to help provide the most useful information for each situation. There is little point collecting a vast amount of data if this is just to be filed away, so focus on features will provide immediate visible benefit.

Some key performance indicators, with some illustrative parameters, can include:
1) Green speed: This helps to determine the level of effort needed to deliver a bowl to the jack. A more uniform, even surface, with good grass coverage, at a suitable height and minimal levels of thatch will produce a consistent and smooth and more continuous, longer, roll and appropriate draw of the bowl, without having to exert excessive force in delivery. A faster surface relates to where the bowl will continue to roll without coming to an early stop and without then need for excess force to overcome a soft thatch surface. A medium speed for a green will be given as 12-13 seconds, whilst a slow one will be 10-11 seconds, and a fast one 14-16 seconds. Slow greens can be considered more as heavy greens, whilst faster green might be considered as firmer or lighter greens, as the notion of green speed measured in seconds does appear counterintuitive.
2) Total (live) vegetative ground cover, including grass density: Bare and thin or worn areas detract from overall impression of a green and they do affect the playing experience. Ideally ground cover will be very high. Measuring thin and bare areas, or their development, helps to provide an indication of the impact play might be having and this could influence how rinks are used, or even the level of play, which might need to be reduced at certain times to ensure the surface doesn’t go from observable thinning to actual bare spots. The impact of a wide range of maintenance practices will also affect the total ground cover and density of the grasses.

Regular mowing of a green will contribute to keeping a suitably dense sward. Parameters might range from a minimum of 99.5% live ground coverage to 95% depending on the quality of surface at a specific time of year. Where renovation work takes place, especially hollow-tining, then there will naturally be a bare area present in the tine hole until grass colonisation has taken place. Appropriate allowance needs to be made for this within parameters for the time of year of this activity.