Repair your Pitchmarks

Today - August 14th is National repair your pitchmark day! Created in order to raise awareness of the amount of un-repaired pitchmarks you find and the time it takes greens to recover from them.

Seems like a good idea to us! You can follow and tweet using #NationalRepairYourPitchmarkDay

Nice update here:

http://www.golfshake.com/news/view/6163/National_Repair_your_Pitchmark_Day_proves_a_hit_with_Golfers.html

As a player that virtually never takes a divot, I have a comment and a question!

1. It would be really nice if more people were to make more effort to repair the damage that they have caused to the course, which at times is excessive and really spoils the on course experience for others!

2. I find myself wondering whether not taking a divot is good or bad? - As I don't generally, I suppose I am more at risk of topping it, which I certainly do occasionally. - On the odd occasions my club does hit the ground before the ball, it inevitably ends up with a weak, misdirected shot, so definitely not good for me in terms of the outcome!

I would be very interested to hear what people think about this?

Bob,

1. People tend to repair pitch marks at my course, the members are really proud of the greens and look after them very, very well. You can tell when a society has visited the course, especially if you're following them. No all societies are like that, I must add, we've had some fantastic guests at the club.

2. If you're taking a divot before the ball, you've not hit the ball correctly. This is why you get a weak shot, 'a fat shot.' A correctly struck shot strikes the ball first, then takes a divot.

A great initiative with #nationalrepairyourpitchmarkday a common theme seems to be societies playing as guests at clubs which results in unrepaired pitch marks. Is this an area to focus on?

Darren

It is a common misconception and an easy option to blame societies for unrepaired pitchmarks, i run a small society myself and on numorous occasions due to club rules regarding visitor parties we have played behind groups of members and on every occasion the greens have had unrepaired pitchmarks on them left by said members.

now whilst we endeavouor to repair on the basis of "our own +1" i understand that there probably are societies out there the do not repair them at all.

with the introduction of #nationalrepairyourpitchmarkday (something i totally agree and helped with) hopefully this can raise the awareness to everyone and help stop the "bad attitude" towards societies.