Science is fine tuning the perfect pitch

However, technology means that in future poor players will be robbed of the "bad greens" excuse for poor performance. Technology developed with the help of 100 golf clubs to measure and assess the performance and quality of golf greens has been hailed as the biggest step forward in the industry in 30 years.

The equipment has been researched and put together by the Bingley-based Sports Turf Research Institute (STRI), which was started in 1929 by two local businessman and backed by the home golf unions and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, who all agreed that British golf courses would be improved by an American-style scientific approach.

STRI's expertise now covers surfaces for many sports, including football, rugby, cricket, horseracing, showjumping, tennis, bowls and Gaelic sports, as well as school and public playing fields. Its client list of 2,000 encompasses many of the country's top football clubs, Wembley (more of which later), all nine "Open" golf courses, Wimbledon, Ascot, Murrayfield, Headingley and Lord's.

Employing around 80 people and with a turnover of 3.5m, it has worked in 20 countries – from small local amenities to world-renowned venues like Croke Part in Dublin and the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

A team is currently working with local ground staff to ensure the performance quality of the 52 training and tournament pitches involved in the FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the UEFA Champions League stadia.

Unperturbed by the drizzle, soil scientist Christian Spring

enthusiastically gets his kit out for a quick demonstration of some of the devices in his armoury. We're surrounded by 22 acres of land the STRI owns, most of them taken up by sizeable test beds of different kinds of grass being grown, analysed and tested for their suitability for different sports.

A Stimp Meter rolls a ball down a ramp then measures how far it rolls on different surfaces; a Theta Probe uses its 60mm prongs to measure moisture; the Clegg Impact Soil Tester (originally designed for use in road building) tests the firmness of a green by dropping a half-kilo machined aluminium weight from a half-metre height. The deceleration reading tells green keepers how the grass is coping with weather and use at different times of year. And the trueness meter – developed with Sheffield Hallam University – measures smoothness.

The general rule of thumb, apparently, is that the smaller the ball used in a sport, the finer the grass must be. STRI tests out new grasses as they come on to the market, and also assesses new herbicides and fungicides used on sporting surfaces according to strict safety and environmental regulations.

The box of gear is open, and so are the heavens. You can practically hear the patchwork quilt of different grasses lapping it up and growing.

"All this is part of our new golf programme, a service we offer

to measure and track green performance," says Christian.

"If you ask 10 golfers about the surface they've just played on,

they'll all say something different dependent on how they've just played. We want to take that subjectivity out of the equation.

"Clubs want to provide the best surface they can and there's a perception that speed is good, but faster is not necessarily better. The greens that look the best don't necessarily play the best either."

The chasing of perfection in playing surface applies to many sports, although maybe none at quite such an obsessive level as golf. STRI is also involved in the construction of golf courses, which grow their grass from seed – unlike top football clubs, which import ready-grown turf delivered in rolls by refrigerated lorries from turf farms in East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

In the warmth of the lab, Michael Baines, another soil scientist, is analysing samples of earth sent in either as part of regular maintenance or because a problem has arisen and the answer may lie in the lack of one crucial nutrient or over-abundance of another.

Michael shows, using a tall glass tube, the perfect foundation for a high performance golf green: a 30cm root zone made up of sand and soil or sand and peat, a shallow layer of fine binding grit below to stop the soil falling away into the coarser grit below, then a deeper core of this coarse layer to enable good drainage.

"Racecourses generally have fairly natural soils, which need few adjustments. Ascot's famous furlongs did need adjustments, though. The work can mean changing grass species, fertiliser, improving drainage/watering, aeration and addition of more organic matter," says Michael.

Autumn is a particularly busy time of year in many sports, and in those months turf grass pathologist Ruth Mann can receive as many as six new cases a day of problems affecting different sporting surfaces.

They may involve a pest or

fungal disorder.

She grows diseases that beleaguer grass and soil in the lab, to assess how they react to different conditions. She is used to finding boxes of squirming larvae or fungal turf in her post.

"Football turf can be prone to the disease leaf spot, a microscopic pest called nematodes and the algal slime Squidge, which crusts on the surface and prevents water penetration. Golf greens can be affected by fusarium patch, anthracnose and plain old earthworms. We like worms and want them in the soil, but not at the surface, where they produce casts affecting ball roll.

"Then there's the leatherjacket, which infests grass roots, and dollar spot, a scourge that can kill off a golf green overnight."

Greater awareness of what STRI can do means programmes of preventative measures can be developed against common threats from nature.

Ruth, who was previously a government scientist and is one of (if not the) top pathologists in her field in Europe, clearly revels in diagnosing problems and has only ever come across a couple of mystery diseases or pests she could not identify. She admits to hankering after a glamorous CSI-style pathology job years ago. "The nearest I got to that was the police coming to me to help work out if a car believed to have been used in a robbery could be proven to have driven on to the golf course by the soil and grass in the tyre treads."

Since STRI got involved with Wimbledon in the 1990s, improvements to courts have meant the quality of the surface is as good on the last day as on day six, says chief executive Gordon McKillop. When it comes to football pitches, assessment of a new kind of grass includes using machinery that simulates the wear and tear of a match.

One of the greatest challenges of recent times, both technically and logistically, was the removal of the pitch for a U2 concert at Croke Park in Dublin last summer, followed by the installation of a replacement pitch in four days in time for the GAA hurling final.

Following coruscating criticism of the state of the playing surface, Wembley Stadium and the FA have worked with the STRI. All concerned say they're confident the pitch will be fine during this month's heavy match schedule. The pitch has now been relaid 11 times at a cost

thought to be around 1m, after Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp, whose side lost to Portsmouth in the FA Cup semi-final said he "wouldn't run horses on that pitch".

Wembley's operators say there is provision for the pitch to be replaced over the course of a season. Ongoing loan repayments on the 750m cost of the stadium mean it will be multi-purpose for another 13 years to maximise revenue. Events seen recently at Wembley include football, rugby union and rugby league, motorsport and pop concerts. Some critics have said problems with the surface are down to overuse; others point to lack of light.

"This new pitch is part of the Wembley pitch replacement strategy, and we're expecting it to play well through all the forthcoming matches," says Gordon McKillop. Wembley's still a work in progress, then, and in the meantime the scientists from Bingley with the green fingers have commitments to the World Cup, Euro 2012 and Brazil 2014 to look forward to.