A golfer encountering a ‘lawn blister’ on the fairway of his local course has created quite the stir.
The player in question has discovered a phenomenon where the turf acts much like a waterbed as the water trapped beneath causes the surface to become unstable.
Any lawn can be subject to this kind of activity but it is more common in places where new grass is laid frequently.
Common causes for these so-called lawn blisters appearing out of nowhere include broken water pipes that have burst underground, or natural gas building up below the surface of the lawn.
In this case it seems to have been triggered by a bout of heavy rain as suggested by the visible puddles in the background.
If you come across one of these on a course you should probably notify the greenskeeper or appropriate member of staff.
Resist the urge to pop these lawn blisters as this can cause severe damage to the turf.
They need to be carefully drained from a single point and the excess water disposed of in a manner that won’t damage the course.
This issue can be a huge problem for golf courses and require costly drainage solutions but they are also more common than you would think given that a lot of golf courses are built on waste land or even reclaimed swamps.
These kinds of blisters will often occur when a pocket of trapped water forms below the grass surface, between the grass and a layer of plastic sheeting that has been laid below the turf. Plastic sheeting can be used in cases where the soil in the area is particularly bad – good soil is scattered onto the plastic liner, allowing you to lay and grow good, healthy turf. There can then be several reasons as to why lawn blisters develop, most commonly being an influx of water into the ground.
It isn’t likely that a golf course would make extensive use of subterranean plastic sheeting, but it certainly cannot be entirely ruled out.
Greywolf Golf Course in Canada once reported a lawn blister that was 18 inches high at its peak, but that particular instance was caused by a burst waterpipe.
The phenomenon is more likely to impact golf courses purely because of the space covered by grass and frequent landscaping work.
