Crunchy grass

Many types of grass are soft underfoot. You can walk across a ryegrass lawn or a Cynodon sports field or a bentgrass green without making a lot of noise.

Then there is Zoysia matrella (manilagrass), with stiff leaf blades that get stiffer the closer you cut them to the stem. When you have the grass cut at green height, there is a distinct crunching sound heard when walking across the turf. I recorded a video of the sound, on greens cut at 2.6 mm (0.1 inch) at Keya GC in western Japan.

When the leaf blades are longer, the sound is not as pronounced. When the leaf blades are cut short, and the shoe is interacting with the bases of the leaf blades, that’s when you hear the sound most clearly.