Turf Tips
05/27/2008

Mowing height does not affect speed of athletes

We often hear the comment by coaches to change the mowing height of an athletic field when a particularly “fast” or “slow” team is coming to play.  In a comprehensive article by Kevin Trotta in a June 16, 2004, “Turf News” article, he clearly showed that mowing height has little effect on player speed. Thought the following table summarizes part of the article, the complete article is available at: http://www.athleticturf.net/athleticturf/Athletic+Turf+News/New-study-suggests-mowing-height-has-little-influe/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/99087?contextCategoryId=3226

Table 1: Forty yard dash times for high school athletes from various sports when run on Kentucky bluegrass mowed at 3, 2 or 1 inch. Six or seven athletes were used from each sport and each athlete ran two dashes at each height. Differences in times between mowing heights within each athlete group was not statistically significant.

Zac Reicher, Professor/Turfgrass Extension Specialist

Send corrections, suggestions, and comments to biehlj@purdue.edu