You want to match the greens speed of the PGA tour greens or just get closer to what you are seeing on your local course in your backyard?

How do you speed up an artificial putting green?  Make sure you have the correct amount of infill (material you add to the turf to weight it down and help the synthetic fibers stand up like grass.  Preform basic maintenance of correctly brushed your turf so it is standing up and does not have a distinctive grain pattern.  Roll your turf to reduce friction as the ball travels over the turf fibers.

If you are not sure how to perform any of the steps above, please continue reading and we will dig into the details.

Steps to speed up your artificial putting green

Make sure you have the correct amount of infill.

Infill is the material (usually sand) that is used to weigh down the turf and help prop up the synthetic turf fibers.  When you have the right amount of infill the fibers of your turf will stand vertically and be properly supported when the ball rolls over them. Too little infill and your turf may lay down or could have more room to bend when the ball rolls over which would cause more resistance on the ball and slow it down.  With the proper amount of infill the fibers of your turf will not be allowed to bend substantially when the ball rolls over this allows the ball to roll on top of the fibers, decreasing resistance and increasing ball speed.

It could be you did not install enough infill when you put in your putting green or over time infill can be blown out of the turf by wind.

If you suspect you need to add more infill make sure you use the correct infill type.  Check with your putting green installer if the green was professional installed.  There are a lot of proprietary blends of infill and it can be hard to weigh through the claims made by the companies to know what is marketing and what really matters.  You want infill that will not compact substantially, will allow water to drain through, and will not be susceptible to mold.   A silica sand with a round grain is a good choice as the round grain will not compact as much and will allow for space in between the sand grains where water can drain through.  Apply the infill with a drop spreader like this one that drops the sand consistently straight down, not a broadcaster spread that shoots the sand out in front.   Drop spreaders will give you a much more uniform consistency.

Once you have replaced the infill to the desired level next step would be to brush your turf.

Brushing your turf

Whether you just added more infill, or you have the right amount of infill and just need get your turf groomed correctly brushing is an important step.  Brushing your turf stands the synthetic fibers of the turf up and allow the infill to fall correctly around the fibers to support them.   To correctly brush your turf start by brushing against the grain of your turf.  This will to the best job of stand all the fibers up so the sand can settle down to support them.  After you have brushed all the fibers up against the grain go back and brush the green from different sides and angles to remove any grain pattern in your green that might effect your balls travel.

Rolling your turf

Rolling your turf is a good last step to really squeak out that extra speed if you need it.  You can roll your turf using one of the large water filled lawn rollers like this one.

What is nice about these rollers is you can adjust the amount of water you put in the roller to dial in the amount of compaction you get.  The goal with the roller is not to compact the infill.  It is to simply bend the top of the synthetic fibers over so that you ball meets less resistance by rolling over side surface of the slightly bent fibers vs having to push them over as the ball rolls.  This only works with the correct amount of infill as the fibers need to be properly supported.  You don’t want the roller laying all the fibers down, you just want the very top of the fibers to be bent over for the fastest performance.

How to test the speed?

A device called a stimpmeter is used to measure the speed of a golf green.  It is a long stick used as a ramp.  A ball is placed on the stick 30 inches from the bottom, the stick is held at an angle of around 22 degrees and the ball rolls down a v-shaped grove onto the green.  The distance the ball rolls across the green is the stimp rating.  If the ball rolls 10 ft the strip rating for that green is 10.

The higher the stimp rating the faster the green.  Want your own stimpmeter find one here. 

What speed are golf course putting greens?

There is a current speed addiction when it comes to greens; over the years greens have been getting faster and faster.  Lots of courses, especially tournament courses are designing their greens faster than previous year.  Stimp rating of 7 is considered slow.  Stimp rating of 14 is considered fast.  Most PGA tour greens have a stimp rating of around 12.   If you want to match what the pro’s are doing, you would be looking for a stimp rating close to 12.  But there are other benefits to knowing your stimp rating, besides comparing yourself to the pros, knowing you green speed can be helpful to dial in a consistent green and understanding repeatable steps that went into getting that speed.  Being able to reproduce and maintain a consistent green speed means that part of the putting equation is consistent.  Practicing on a consistent putting green means I can focus on other aspects of my putting game without having to take green speed into consideration.

Anything I can do to speed up an indoor putting green?

If you have a putting green of synthetic turf similar to common outdoor turf you still may be able to follow the same infill, brushing and rolling technique listed above.  However, most are not looking to haul sand into their house to speed up their green.  You can work on vacuuming and roll your green without the sand to see how quick you could get your green.  Lastly you could try to buy a well rated green like this one which users report a stimp rating of 10.5.

What if you want to slow down your putting green?

What do you do if your green is rolling too fast, how do you slow it down?  You can slow your artificial green down with a few steps.  The first thing I would try is to brush your green against the grain then brush from all directions.  Skip the rolling step.  If that doesn’t work and you believe you have too much infill, you can try to sweep out infill or blow it out with a leaf blower.  Be warned it is hard to blow out infill with a leaf blower and maintain consistency, so be super careful and patient.  Do not directly point the leaf blower into the turf.  Once you have removed some infill you will need to brush your turf in all directions considerably to make sure you have