Let the wheel debate begin

Norrin Radd

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Hedgehogs or not.
It's that time of year when the wheels on your trolley are either ok or not .so what is the score on your course ? Is it lots of holes all over the fairway or skid marks on the hills?
 
No requirement to use them, never seen a trolley ban at our place either. Buggies are banned when too wet but never trollies.

Hedgehog wheels and iron covers in one week 😱
 
Will be compulsory at our course soon if you want to keep using your trolley. Mine will be coming out as carrying is not an option due To breathing difficulties.
 
Come November I switch the motocaddy over to hedgehogs

I've seen them make the trolly Slip less in the mud

Just incase a course I go to has a rule

Then April back to normal
 
Not required at my place.
In fact I’ve never played anywhere that has stipulated there use.
 
Hedgehogs are compulsory at our place to help maintain the quality of the fairways & around the teeing areas. They certainly assist in aerating the ground
 
They are not required at my course. I don't have hedgehogs but I do have winter wheels which I use as my course has quite a few hills so when the ground gets soft and wet enough that my trolley wheels start to slip/slide, I swap to my winter wheels.
 
Hedgehogs are compulsory at our place to help maintain the quality of the fairways & around the teeing areas. They certainly assist in aerating the ground
They don't aerate anything. They just push the surface into the ground causing compaction. Hollow tines remove the cores allowing air in. Solid tines are slimmer and longer causing virtually no compaction but allow water to soak further into the ground. Further, aeration is normally performed on greens where the soil structure is quite different, consisting largely of sand and does not compact. Hedgehog wheels are not designed for greens.

The manufacture says "A fully loaded golf trolley with 3” wide flat wheels equates to 6-7 square inches in contact with the ground at any one time. If you then put Hedgehog fairway protectors onto the same trolley the ground contact would be about 1-2 square inches"

So the same weight is distributed over a smaller area. I wonder how they explain the purpose of snowshoes?
 
Our course manager prefers people to use winter wheels but it is not compulsory, I assume he knows his job and I will be putting them on the next time I play.
 
I can sort of understand them on electric trollies to prevent the wheels spinning, but not on push trollies - that just baffles me🤔
 
We've found that the 'spines' on the hedgehogs cause depressions on soft ground increasing the area of air contact thus assisting drying out. They also improve traction on soft sloping areas & make for an easy rolling low friction action. They certainly work for us. Each to their own I guess.
 
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