Hopefully you got your hole placements right when you installed your green. But not everyone does. You might be wondering do you have to live with these hole placements or if there are other options?
Can you move holes in a synthetic putting green? Yes, but this is a challenging project. To add the new hole, you will need:
First add a new hole by:
- Accessing the base under your putting green.
- Excavating the base to put in a new cup
- Cementing in the new hole cup
- Placing the turf back
- Cutting the cup into the turf
Second remove and patch the old hole by:
- Accessing and removing the old cup
- Compacting in new base material
- Patching the turf where the cup was located.
- Replace infill material and groom the green.
Moving a hole might be above the skill level of a lot of DIYers, there is a high risk of damaging your green and risk of incurring costly repairs or replacement of the entire green, so please calling in an expert. The information below is aimed at allowing you to understand the process of moving a hole, attempt at your own risk. Let’s talk through the basics of what needs to be done to move a hole in a synthetic putting green.
How do you move holes in a synthetic putting green?
The overly simplified version is to add a new hole and remove the old one. But that doesn’t get you very far; so, first let’s talk through the basics of putting green construction as a lot of the steps to move a hole rely on this basic knowledge.
Putting greens are usually constructed by excavating a location, then adding a base material of crushed rock or gravel. Compacting this material down to form a solid base that drains water well. Cup locations are dug into the base and cups are placed and cemented in. Synthetic turf is laid on the base and all seems are connected and taped or glued. The turf is pinned down to anchor it. At this point the cups are under the turf. They are then located, the turf is cut and glued around them. Lastly a layer of infill (usually sand or sand like material) is spread over the turf. This infill weighs down the turf and also fills in the space at the base of the turf fibers causing them to stand up like blades of grass.
Now that you know the basics of putting green construction lets move on to adding a new hole in a green.
How do you add new holes to a synthetic putting green?
The method below is how to add a hole in synthetic turf without having to remove and replace the entire green.
Decide the new location of your hole. Don’t take this decision lightly as it is hard to remove the hole once it is in.
Accessing the base under your putting green
Vacuum out infill around where you will be adding the new hole. You will want to vacuum out a large area to make the steps to come easier.
If your hole is near the edge of the turf you may be able to just vacuum to the edge, unpin the turf and roll it back to where the whole will be (easy method). If you want to place your new hole in the middle of the turf and rolling up the turf from the edge isn’t an option, you will need to cut a slit in your turf (difficult method). To cut a slit in your turf, you will want to cut this slit into the weave that makes up the base of the turf fabric without cutting the turf fibers that are sticking up. You will be patching this slit back together later in this process so take extra care here. It is important to make the cut with the weave of your green. If you were to flip the turf over you would see the weave on the back has a grid pattern. Think about this when cutting a slit in the turf, you will want to cut along the grid pattern not diagonally across it. The goal is to make this slit long enough so you have enough room to do the remaining steps of excavating the base, inserting and cementing in the new cup. The goal of this cut is not to cut a circle to place the hole in. That will be done later as a sperate cut once this slit has been repaired.
Excavating the base to put in a new cup
Now that you have access to the base, either through the slit you cut or through going under the turf from the edge, you will want to dig a hole in your putting green base material that is 2 inches wider than the cup on all sides and 1 inch deeper. This will give you room to add concrete around your base to anchor the cup from tipping or moving once you are done. Keep in mind the base was compacted and is likely very hard to dig into. If you can’t penetrate the base you could trying using a tile chisel like this one.
Cementing the cup into the base
Hold the cup in the hole and fill around the cup with concrete. You will want the concrete mix to be a little stiffer than milk shake consistency, so it fills in the hole around the cup when you pour the concrete in and jiggle the cup. Use a trowel to smooth out the concrete and leave the cup level with the base fill material. You should smooth and feather the concrete out over the base material around the cup in a 12-18 inch diameter so you do not have any lumps or ridges leading up to the cup. You don’t need to add any cement to the bottom of the hole when you put in the cup. A quick tip: coat the cup with Vaseline or wd-40 before adding the concrete. Then as the concrete dries twist the cup periodically in the whole to allow it to move freely. This way when the concrete dries around the cup supporting it, but you can still remove the cup. This can be great if you need to raise or lower the cup at a later time. In the end you will want your cup just below the green turf level when you are finished. Being able to adjust the cup later means you don’t have to be perfect estimating its placement now.
Placing the turf back
If you worked by rolling the green back to add the new hole you can simply lay the green back over the whole and pin it back down. If you lost your pins you can find more here. If you had to cut a slit in your green to access the location to put in the new hole now is the time to repair that slit. To repair the slit you will need to line up the two sides of the slit to check for fit. Once everything is in the right spot. Use an artificial grass tape like this one, to get the sides of the slit to hold back together. To apply the tape correctly, pull the turf back and place the tape under the slit with the white backing strip still attached and facing up. Keep the white tape backer on at this point is important so the tape doesn’t stick to everything. Make sure to line up the center of the slit to the center of the tape. The white backing strip on the tape should be divided in half the long way. If it is not score the white backing strip of the tape so that you can remove one side of the strip at a time. Start by removing one side of the tap white backing strip slowly as you progress down the tape removing the white backing strip press the turf from one side of the slit down onto the now exposed sticky side of the tape. Make sure you are lining up the edge of the slit with the center of the tape. When you have finished one side repeat the process on the other side, slowly removing the white tape backer as you progressively move down the slit pressing the turf into the sticky side of the tape. With this second side make sure you are lining the two turf edges up tight with no gaps.
Cutting the cup into the turf
Cut in the turf around the cup using the inside edge of the cup as your guide.
Replace the infill material and groom the green
Next replace the infill material you vacuumed out at the beginning of the process. Match the sand you used on the rest of your green. If you can reuse the sand out of your vacuum that can be the most cost effective or buy new sand. You don’t want to use just any sand. It is important to have a fine silica sand with round grain, here is an example.
Brush your green to stand up your green fibers and get consistency in your infill. To do this brush against the grain to stand up the fibers of the turf and allow the sand to settle and support the turf fibers. Follow that up by brushing the green from every direction to make sure you don’t have a distinctive grain pattern in the green that would effect your ball’s line of travel.
Lastly, you can roll your green to bend the top of the fibers and increase green speed. Big yard rollers like this one work well as you can very the amount of water you put into the drum to control the weight of the roller.
How do you fill in a hole in a synthetic putting green?
Very simply remove the old cup and patch the turf. Here are the detailed steps.
Accessing and removing the old cup
Vacuum out the infill – use a shop vac to vacuum the infill from the green in a 3ft radius. If the hole is near the edge of the green vacuum to the greens edge to allow you to access the hole under the turf from the edge.
Access the hole to remove the cup – if you can access the hole from the edge of the green I would suggest doing so. Roll the turf back to uncover the hole. If you cannot access the hole from the edge you can cut a slit into the green big enough that you could excavate the cup through that slit. I do not recommend cutting a large hole as it will be more difficult to patch. If you do need to cut a slit in your green take time to figure out the pattern of the weave that makes up your green backing. You will want to cut along the grid pattern of the weave not across it. Cutting along the green pattern will make it easier to repair later.
Excavate the cup out of the ground – Once you can access the cup you will want to chip it out of the compacted base material. Cups are usually encased in concrete to keep them from shifting. You will need to excavate the concrete as well. If you can’t penetrate the base you could trying using a tile chisel like this one.
Fill in the base – add gravel or crushed rock to match the existing base of our green. You will want to create a mount of base material higher than the existing base as you will be compacting the base in the next step.
Compact in the new base material
Really focus on this step. Proper compaction of the base where you removed the whole is one of the largest risks to your putting green going forward. If fail to get the base filling in the hole to the same rate of compaction as the base material around it, the base material filling the hole will settle causing a divot in your putting green that will likely trap your ball or at the very least disrupt your putting lines. When your green was installed a plate compactor was used to compact the green. If you have the ability to rent a plate compactor it might be a good option but admittedly that is a lot of work for such a small job. Alternately you can use a soil tamper like this one.
The trick to getting good compaction on your soil is to excavate enough base material to correctly fit the tamper tool you are using. Then add only ½ to 1 inch of base material at a time to compact at a time. Repeat adding small amounts of base material and compacting until you have filled up the hole.
Patching the turf where the cup was located
Placing the turf back – similar to the steps above, if you worked by rolling the green back to add the new hole you can simply lay the green back over the whole and pin it back down. If you lost your pins you can find more here. If you had to cut a slit in your green to access the location to put in the new hole now is the time to repair that slit. If your slit runs through the hole in the turf left by the removing the cup be sure to read the next step before patching the slit as you will want to patch the hole at the same time. To repair the slit you will need to line up the two sides of the slit to check for fit. Once everything is in the right spot. Use an artificial grass tape like this one. to get the sides of the slit to hold back together. To do this pull the turf back and place the tape under the slit, with the white backing strip up. Keep the white tape backer on at this point so the tape doesn’t stick to everything. Make sure the line up the center of the slit to the center of the tape. Start by removing one side of the tap white backing strip slowly as you progress down the tape removing the white backing strip press the turf from one side of the slit down onto the now exposed sticky side of the tape. Make sure you are lining up the edge of the slit with the center of the tape. When you have finished one side repeat the process on the other side, slowly removing the white tape backer as you progressively move down the slit pressing the turf into the sticky side of the tape. With this second side make sure you are lining the two turf edges up tight with no gaps.
At this point you are left with a circular cup sized hole in your turf where the cup used to be. I recommend cutting a bigger square around the small circle hole you have as it will be much easier to replace a square of turf than a circle. This square does not need to be much bigger than the circle hole you are replacing it is just much easier to tape the seems of a square than a circle. Once you have cut a square hole, grab a new piece of turf and cut it to match the exact dimensions of the hole so it fits tightly inside. Use the artificial turf seem tape on all for sides of the square hole. Pull the turf out of the hole once you are confident it will be a tight fit. Lay four pieces of seems tape in the hole one on each length of the square. Make sure to lay then with tape down with the white backing strip up. Remove the white backing strip from the side of the tap that is under the turf and push the turf down firmly into the tap. You should now have for pieces of tape firmly attached to the four sides of the hole with the white backing still on the half of the tape in the open hole that will receive the piece of filler turf patching the hole. Next work your way around the sides of the whole pulling back the remaining white backing of the tape and attaching it to the piece of filler turf you cut. Work slowly making sure that all seems align as you work your way around the square.
Replace infill material and groom the green
Your turf is patched and you can just replace your infill where you vacuumed it out at the beginning of the process. Like above, match the sand you used on the rest of your green. If you can reuse the sand out of your vacuum that can be the most cost effective, but you will likely not have enough. You don’t want to use just any sand. It is important to have a fine silica sand with round grain, here is an example.
Like you did above, brush your green against the grain to stand up the fibers and let the base material settle in to support them. Then brush from all directions to remove any grain or texture to your green that well effect your ball movement. Roll your green if you deem it necessary. I would suggest reading my post on increasing the speed of your synthetic golf green if you have not already for tips on getting grooming your green for speed.