Hardness and Firmness of turf: Keys to good measurement

Measuring the hardness and firmness of the turf will help us to predict the performance of the surface. Depending on whether we are managing sports surfaces for golf, football, rugby or cricket, we will talk about surface compactness in terms of firmness for our greens or hardness for the rest.

The TruFirm is the instrument normally used by the USGA, a tool well known to our greenkeepers. It uses a hammer with a hemispherical shape in the end zone that simulates the impact of a golf ball falling on the green from a fixed height. Penetration is recorded in inches and correlated to the firmness of the surface, with the firmer the green the smaller the indentation made.

Trufirm is the most common tool for golf reading.

There is also another portable instrument used by the PGA Tour, which drops a steel ball with a certain weight to a fixed height, the indentation made is measured and is a measure of the firmness obtained.

The Clegg's hammer measures the deceleration of the fall of a given free mass from a fixed height onto the test surface. The impact produces an electric pulse, which is converted to units of gravities and depending on the value of the weight it is used for golf or football, with optimum results in football being accepted as those between 70-85 (FIFA recommendation) and values between 80-100 gravities for Parkland and 100-130 in the case of Links (STRI).

New technologies such as FieldTester allow for more complete and accurate measurements.

The introduction of versatile instrumentation such as the new Field Tester not only allows you to know the hardness values but also biomechanical information such as shock absorption, energy restitution or vertical displacement

It is worth mentioning the high correlation between the volumetric % moisture content and the hardness or firmness values obtained, which are higher as the moisture content of the respective surfaces measured decreases. Therefore, when testing a surface, it is interesting to test it over the same ranges of humidity.

Other measurements of interest:

It is also really interesting to know how this compactness is distributed in the soil profile and thus know what depth of aeration you need to carry out on your greens or football pitches, we use a penetrometer that identifies the different profiles to which the hardness changes, thus enabling us to identify intermediate layers of different textures, compactness, etc.

Today Tiloom can offer you all the best instrumentation to manage your sports surfaces whether it is football, rugby, golf, cricket, etc...

Do you want to know more? Ask us at info@tiloom.com