Properly fixing ball marks good thing for everyone.  A recent article in Golf Digest describing how Augusta National encourages a method for fixing ball marks is credited for keeping their greens so pristine.  The quality of their greens also has to do with a low number of rounds a year and a robust maintenance staff.  However, anything players can do to assist the staff would be a benefit to all.  The excerpt below is from the interview with their groundskeeper Steve Aspinall.  It is only a three-minute read.  I tried the method recently.  It didn't take very long and worked great.

Golf Digest: Steve, how do you use the Augusta method of repairing ball marks?
Aspinall:  One of the most important things is you need to be using either a tee or a single-pronged ball mark repair tool to do it properly.  You go vertically down into the middle of the deepest part of the ball mark, and you do a circular motion. As you're doing that circular motion, you're trying to push the grass up and out toward the edge of the mark. When your ball hits the green, the impact creates a wedge of grass on the backside of the pitch mark. Once you have that hole in there, you pat that grass back into the middle of the pitch mark to fill it in and get it back to the same level. You’re pushing that back in, trying to repair whatever grass you can.  I’ve found that it eliminates the entire ball mark. If you do it right, there's no ball mark left. There’s no ripping the roots. You’re just trying to put it back the way it was.

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