10 ways soil data makes your golf and sports maintenance work more effective
At Soil Scout, our mission is to create soil insights through groundbreaking technology. That means providing new ways to understand and manage your turf – not just collecting data but delivering insights for better turf management.
Whether you manage a golf course, stadium, or any sports turf, understanding what’s happening below the surface is the key to improving turf health and saving resources. From optimizing irrigation and aeration to extending playability and boosting course profitability, the right soil insights enable you to make smarter decisions for your turf management.
This guide shares 10 practical ways that soil moisture monitoring and data-driven turf care can transform your approach to sports turf maintenance strategy and help you do more with less.
1. Reducing water usage for irrigation by 66% with moisture data
A golf course grounds team in Spain believed heavy watering was essential in the hot, dry climate. If irrigation is delayed too long, it risks pushing the turf toward wilting, where roots struggle for water and oxygen.
However, data revealed they were over-irrigating by up to 50%, hugely exceeding field capacity. Adjusting their approach, they first cut irrigation by a third. Yet, moisture levels remained too high, proving the soil was severely waterlogged and essentially drowning.
With continued monitoring, they reduced irrigation by another third. Despite using 66% less water, turf health improved, and the surface became higher quality. Moisture levels stabilized, preventing overwatering and drought stress.
By eliminating excessive irrigation, the course conserved water, optimized its soil, and enhanced turf performance. This led to adopting a data-driven, more sustainable maintenance strategy in the future.
2. Optimizing irrigation timing and volume to penetrate the root zone
In California and other regions of the U.S., water is both scarce and expensive, with golf courses being pressured to reduce consumption. One Californian club, for instance, spends over $500,000 annually on irrigation to maintain its fairways. Previously, the club irrigated multiple times throughout the day. However, Soil Scout sensors at two different depths showed that the water was not penetrating the soil profile due to water evaporating or remaining in the topsoil, preventing deeper penetration.
In response, the grounds team decided to perform a single, substantial overnight irrigation strategy. This allowed water to reach deeper soil layers, encouraging the roots to grow.
3. Giving precise instructions on job boards to untrained ground staff
At a leading golf club in Singapore, course maintenance follows a carefully designed agronomic plan, executed by a team of staff who rely on clear, structured instructions rather than independent decision-making.
To ensure efficient course management and prevent unintended damage, Soil Scout data provides a complete, real-time snapshot of soil conditions across the golf course every morning. This allows the head of agronomy to make informed adjustments and communicate precise, data-driven maintenance tasks to the team – ensuring optimal turf care without requiring on-the-spot decision-making from ground staff.
4. Using soil data to focus aeration on problem areas
Winston Golf in Germany, led by Erwan Le Cocq, monitored soil moisture and oxygen levels in both high- and low-performing areas. They found that well-draining high spots recovered from heavy rainfall within a day, while low-lying, waterlogged areas took up to a week for oxygen and moisture levels to stabilize.
Soil Scout data revealed that solid tine aeration reduced moisture in waterlogged areas but failed to improve oxygen levels. This showed that the process compacted the soil around the tine rather than increasing pore space or oxygen.
To address this, the team used an Air2G2 machine to focus aeration on problem areas while minimizing work on healthy sections. By focusing maintenance on poor-performing areas and only monitoring high-performing sections during stress events, they cut aeration work by 60% while achieving healthier turf. This approach ensured stronger root development, better nutrient uptake, and a more resilient course with less effort.
5. Starting spring turf maintenance at the optimal time
Hirsala Golf Club in Finland uses soil temperature data to monitor areas of the course that thaw earliest and latest, helping ground staff make informed decisions about when to begin spring maintenance. This precise monitoring allowed them to start preparations at the earliest possible time, ensuring the course was ready for play as soon as possible.
By optimizing their spring maintenance timing, the club now has the potential to open their doors to eager golfers earlier, generating additional revenue while maintaining course quality.
6. Monitoring subsoil temperature and oxygen levels under winter covers
In Latvia, where snow and cold weather are prominent for several months of the year, maintaining healthy grass under winter covers is a critical challenge. If subsoil conditions become hypoxic, bentgrass can suffer permanent root death, compromising pitch quality. To prevent this, the ground staff of a multifunctional stadium in Riga use Soil Scout sensors to continuously monitor both temperature and oxygen levels beneath the covers.
By tracking soil temperature and oxygen conditions, the team can take proactive measures, such as temporarily removing covers to allow oxygen to penetrate the soil. This prevents suffocation of the roots and maintains turf health throughout the winter. Additionally, monitoring helps them avoid conditions that promote snow mold, a common issue in cold climates.
This careful management ensures that the pitch emerges from winter in optimal condition, reducing the need for extensive repairs and allowing for a smooth transition into the playing season.
7. Managing salinity and moisture in sandy soils
In the UAE, sandy soils and environmental levels of high salinity are two significant factors for golf courses. Sandy soils contain lower organic matter and smaller pore space, which means the overall field capacity is lower, but water also drains through the profile faster.
For one club, their irrigation water comes from desalination plants and still retains higher ambient levels of salinity, which means they need to use more water to flush down the salt. However, although this process dilutes top soil salinity, it uses lots of water resources and increases the overall salt amount in the ground.
Equipped with this knowledge from Soil Scout's insights, the golf club invested in applying a liquid natural clay layer beneath the soil profile. This layer acts as a semi-permeable membrane, holding moisture in the root zone for longer without restricting necessary drainage.
Soil Scout sensors continue to track how this clay layer influences soil behavior, helping the team fine-tune the clay layer moisture, irrigation, fertilization, and overall field capacity. By carefully monitoring and adjusting its approach, the course maintains optimal soil conditions while managing salinity more effectively.
8. Optimizing fungicide application based on soil temperature
A Soil Scout customer in Massachusetts used sensors to optimize fungicide application based on subsoil temperature, improving effectiveness against invasive fungal species.
Surrounded by dense forests and diverse plant life, the course faces ongoing challenges with invasive fungal species. Effective fungicide application is crucial to their maintenance strategy, but its success depends on subsoil temperature, which often differs from ambient conditions.
To optimize application timing, the team uses Soil Scout sensors to monitor subsoil temperatures in real-time. This ensures fungicides are applied within the ideal temperature window, maximizing their effectiveness while reducing waste.
Different fungal diseases thrive at specific temperature ranges. For example, dollar spot becomes active between 60-90 °F and is favored by warm days, cool nights, and heavy dew, while brown patch emerges above 65°F. By targeting treatments more precisely, the team improved disease control, enhanced turf health, and minimized unnecessary chemical use.
9. Optimizing ground water and commercial water usage to manage salinity
Managing salinity for desert golf courses, links golf courses, or sports fields by the coast or desert can be a big challenge.
A Soil Scout football customer in Spain used well water for irrigation to reduce fresh water use. However, even though they were irrigating up to field capacity, Soil Scout’s sensors clearly showed that the well water's high salinity increased the overall soil salt levels over the next few days.
To manage this, the grounds team adopted a two-step flushing method: the first irrigation dissolved salts, while a second, heavier irrigation above the field capacity pushed the salt through the soil.
These insights were valuable as the grounds team could make informed decisions on when to use fresh or well water and then check that it reduces salinity in the soil profile.
10. Preventing & eliminating black layer in hot, humid environments
During the Qatar FIFA World Cup, maintaining healthy turf was a challenge due to the stadiums' extreme heat and coastal humidity. These conditions create a microenvironment that encourages black layer formation and a buildup of anaerobic organic matter that leads to hypoxia and lowers pitch performance.
The ground teams needed to closely monitor salinity and temperature levels of the soil using Soil Scout sensors and optimize irrigation to the minimum optimum field capacity instead of the maximum optimum level, to maintain healthy roots.
As a result, during the World Cup, they managed to reduce the salinity present in the soil to 9%, which is many percentage points lower than what is possible elsewhere in the region.
By carefully managing irrigation and salinity, stadiums in high-heat, high-humidity environments can maintain stronger, healthier turf while minimizing water use.
Conclusion
When it paints the right picture, soil data can massively change how we manage sports turf and golf courses. Whether you're optimizing irrigation schedules, improving soil aeration, or reducing water usage, integrating soil moisture sensors and data-driven strategies will help you manage turf more effectively, sustainably, and efficiently.
Using real-time data to monitor soil conditions, turf managers can make smarter decisions, resulting in better turf health, more efficient resource usage, and improved profitability for golf courses and stadiums.
