The dreaded hydraulic oil leak...

There are very few things Superintendents fear more than hydraulic oil leaks; especially the ones that occur on a green.  Well, that being said...

hydraulic oil leak on #2 green

The good news is that the staff member operating that mower immediately detected the leak and promptly drove the mower off the green and into the rough which prevented any more oil from spewing onto the green.  Any turf that came into contact with the oil will die and must be sod cut out and replaced with new turf.  Sod must be cut from the edge of the green and placed where the contaminated turf was removed.  Next, more sod is cut from a turf nursery, the old tee deck on #18 in this case, and placed at the edge of the green where the other sod was removed.  This restoration was quickly looked after and the green was open and back in play by 10am the same morning.

contaminated turf removed

new sod from green edge placed, leveled and sanded

This repair will require some TLC over the next few weeks, but will slowly fade away and become undetectable.

Two very important and valuable lessons learned from this unfortunate occurrence:

1. Our operating budget still falls short of affording us enough labour to eliminate the potential of a hydraulic oil leak on our greens by walkmowing only.
2. We really need to make establishing a proper turf nursery a top priority to avoid having to "steal" turf from other in-play areas of the course (ie - #18 tee and/or chipping green).