JESII asked:
"I wonder if there are any negatives from a maintenance perspective to adjusting greens speeds by a fairly wide margin during the primary growing season. I guess you'd have to change mower heights and schedules, what else would go into it?"
Sully:
This is a very good question and if you really think about it could prove to be the answer for a lot of problems with green speeds (particularly on the high end).
This is a question I asked our super at a green committee meeting recently as well as last year. And it's a question I've asked a number of supers over the years.
The question seems simple enough but the problem is the answer never is simple because so many potential factors go into a comprehensive, honest, accurate answer.
The next problem is most everyone who isn't an agronomist probably wouldn't even understand the comprehensive answer that almost always involves many potential factors. And if they did even remotely understand it they probably don't want to hear it anyway. Most all members of clubs pretty much just want what they want whenever they want it and they don't want to be told by a super what his agronomic problems may be if and when he gives it to them.
First of all, what do you mean by a 'wide range'? Would that be a foot, two feet, three feet? Logically, I'd think it would be harder to manage greens in a range depending on where you start and how high you want to go.
In other words, it's obviously a lot harder to do in a range of 10-11 than 9-10 or even 8-10. The reason is in that on foot differential at the higher end (10-11) you are really in the potential stress zone for grass for a whole lot of reasons depending on numerous factors---eg grass is too short to naturally protect its crowns, wetness, dryness, heat, ground temperature etc, etc.
If you want any kind of answer to this question you pretty much need to ask the super the question given ideal conditions. The only problem with that is supers don't always operate in ideal conditions for their grass.
But the good news, Sully, is the roller gives supers about a foot differential anyway with the same mow height.
I went to a USGA agronomy meeting about two weeks ago and Stan Zontek said that for clubs that are running speeds on the higher end should use the roller and not necessarily lower mow heights to go that last mile (maybe up to a foot in speed) .