GREENS MAINTENANCE

I mentioned in an earlier post that I would describe how I maintain greens and why I do it the way I do. If you look at how a green performs there are a number of items that have to be taken into consideration. Firstly there’s the playability, which the golfer is most concerned about. Speed plays a factor but more importantly is how smooth and true the surface puts. There’s no point in having a fast green if the ball deviates from the line due to a poor surface. To a point these three items are connected to each other and if one if out if can affect the others. The second part is how the green performs agronomically, again if it’s improperly maintained the playability is affected and the potential for turf loss increases.

The greens at LedgeRock are built to USGA specifications, which means they are sand based and designed to drain water quickly while still holding some to sustain growth. It is based on a perched water table which essentially works like a toilet, ie it retains water to a point until it reaches a point where it flushes. For this reason it is important to manage water correctly as to ensure the system isn’t overloaded and remains too wet. I described in the irrigation post how we monitor the moisture and keep them as dry as possible only loading the system when necessary and then drying it down. By doing this it ensures that we don’t run into issues with waterlogging which can ‘drown’ the turf. The more air that is available to the plant the better, both on the surface and to the root system.  By keeping the greens dry, they are firmer which is the first part of maintaining speed and trueness.

The greens here are creeping bentgrass which is an ideal turf as it produces a great consistent surface all year. The other main greens type turf in the northern US is Poa annua which is essentially a weed grass that is very competitive and can get established quickly if it is not taken care of. Poa is a winter annual so prefers cooler wet conditions (and a reason why keeping the turf dry helps keep it out) so it doesn’t do well during the summer. Since it adapts to its environment quickly, it can be very different plant from one place to another – even on a green – hence why bentgrass is the better option for year round consistency. Poa is also capable of producing seed without a large seed stalk so in the spring it is a major concern as when it goes to seed as it creates a bumpy surface. Bentgrass does not go to seed at low heights of cut so this is another reason why it is a better putting surface.

There are a number of ways to try and eliminate poa annua but it is very difficult to keep out. There are chemicals available but they can be risky on greens height turf (although there is one coming out soon that looks really promising). Plant Growth Regulators (PGRs) can be used also to manage poa in bentgrass turf, but, I believe they are a cheater way to manage greens and they can make the plant fat and lazy. I liken them to humans using steroids…… By regulating growth they are also used to manage green speed, however, if done correctly, this can be done using nitrogen – ie reverse growth regulation, if you don’t feed it, it won’t grow!! My other issue with growth regulators is that they make topdressing more difficult. If the plant isn’t growing, then it can’t grow through the topdressing so therefore you can’t put as much sand out. One could use the argument that if the plant is regulated then it’s not growing so you don’t need as much sand but under regulation it is still producing thatch and ‘fattening’ the plant so topdressing is still important. I keep poa out by managing the bentgrass in a way it likes, but poa annua does not (ie minimal water with low and slightly acidic fertility). It is not 100% fool proof but it is very effective and our poa content is minimal (<1%) which is fantastic for a course of our age.

This leads me to thatch management.

Thatch is the buildup of organic matter in turf. Mat is the name given to thatch that has been broken up with sand. The organic build up comes from the plant itself. Creeping bentgrass is a stoloniferous grass which means it produces runners – like a strawberry plant. These runners grow along the surface and as the plant grows it produces more which in turn causes thatch to build up. It can be physically removed by verticutting (literally ripping them out in a vertical motion), by core aeration, topdressing to dilute it and managing how much it grows. I’m not a big fan of verticutting (although it can have it’s place). A stolon will produce a new shoot if cut, so if you cut a runner you are essentially creating a new plant so creating a vicious cycle. It should be noted that a little mat is essential to make the greens receptive and he surface more resilient.

Here are two cores pulled from LRGCs greens mid last July. These roots are excellent for that time of the year when due to the heat etc roots are in decline. Have roots this long means the plant is capable of handling more stress. In the second picture you can notice the slightly darker soil near the grass end which is the mat layer and shows how well managed LRGCs greens are as it is largely consistent with the sand in the remaining profile.

Grooming is a version of verticutting but it is not aggressive and usually is not deep enough to cut the stolons. They are fitted the front of a mower and help stand the turf up for a better cut. Since it adds more stress to the plant I usually stop it during the summer months (and after we topdress as it pulls up the sand!!!) but use them a lot in spring and fall to ensure a perfect cut.

A Toro fairway Grooming Reel (the groomer is the black piece in front of the blade)

 The limiting factor to any drainage system is the slowest draining part and thatch is very slow to drain – hence why keeping it under control is essential to keeping a green performing correctly. Due to using PGRs and the inconvenience topdressing a lot of superintendents are topdressing with very small amounts of topdressing on a frequent basis. While this makes some sense to me the volumes are still not as much as just going out every 2-3 weeks and putting out a proper amount of sand that can be brushed in. The brushing process is very important as it moves the sand around (while also knocking it in) and it fills in any imperfections which helps smoothness and trueness. By going with the small frequent amounts you miss out on this important factor. Below is a picture of a green being brushed after (hollow core aeration) and topdressing. 

The sand used is also very important as it is essential that it matches what is in the rootzone to ensure the drainage works properly and that the sand doesn’t move or shift underfoot. When we topdress I also aerate using needletines (tiny solid spikes that are barely noticeable) which helps dry out the green and also provides air to the roots which keeps them strong. Sometimes I will spike instead which is a small triangular tine which doesn’t go deep but due to the larger surface area provides more air the surface. We hollow core aerate twice a year. This physically removes thatch and also proves a nice channel that can be filled with fresh sand to provide air to the roots for a longer period. It is neat to see during periods of high stress the greener circles where the last aeration holes were. I have our topdressing program tweaked to the point where it is not a major inconvenience. I use a product that eliminates the dew on the mornings after I topdress, in doing so, the mowers do not pull up sand and balls are not affected by it. Remember topdressing is key to keeping thatch under control and by doing so keeps the greens firmer and it also is a major factor in smoothness and trueness which in turn increase greenspeed. Here are some pictures of the needletine aerator in operation. The roller on the back of the machine ensures disruption is kept to a minimum. 

And this is a video of the same machine core aerating.

Most young golf courses have a ‘grow-in thatch’ layer which is caused by pushing the turf with fertilizer during construction to get the course open. I was aware of this before the grow-in here and ensured I grew it in a way to prevent it. Luckily we had the benefit of having some extra time for the grow-in so the greens reaped the long term benefits. This has proven to be a great decision as we did not have the dreaded layer and our thatch/mat levels are exactly where they should be and fully in check. I have tests performed every two years to ensure that the thatch is remaining under control and that the programs in place are working effectively and if not I can make changes before it becomes an issue.

By not using PGRs I do need to mow low which causes more stress on the plant, however by maintaining the greens the way I do (and the fact they are bentgrass) means they handle the stress with ease. But by doing this they sometimes look a little thin especially when the (black) algae appears but this is nothing to worry about once they remain to putt extremely true and smooth, their playability is my biggest concern. The thin turf means you can see the algae whereas normally it would be hidden under the leaves…. Air movement is essential to keeping it under control but, unfortunately, due to rain I don’t always have that luxury so we have to deal with it. Since it is on the surface it does not affect ball roll so does not affect the greens performance other than not being aesthetically perfect. These are pictures of algae on greens.

Minimizing stress during period of high heat, drought and wet periods is essential to keep the turf alive. If the turf starts to stress out I have the options of using different mowers, rollers etc that minimize the potential for damage. I also use plastic boards on the collars for the mowers to turn on as it reduces the stress on the collars and ensures they do not thin out over the summer months. I also use a lightweight greens mower to mow the clean-up pass (the edge of the green), as it also reduces stress and prevents a worn out ring appearing around the edge. It is the one in the background of the picture below.

The last thing to talk about is rolling. I check green speeds daily and roll accordingly. Due to the way I maintain the turf, rolling is not always necessary as it would make the greens too quick!!! So if the speed is in the optimum range I will skip it that morning, so just because the roller isn’t out it doesn’t mean the speeds are any slower!!

The last two items I will discuss further in another post are why we need the fans and why frost causes issues.

So to sum up, I don’t use (like) PGRs but manage growth with fertility, I like heavy topdressing every 2-3 weeks to keep thatch under control and keep them smooth and firm, keep water to a minimum and manage poa annua by making the bentgrass more competitive.

If you managed to make it to here, sorry for the long post, but I like having it all as one rather than spread out throughout the blog….

Why Cart Rules & Restrictions?

Throughout the year there is nothing more frustrating to see traffic control stakes driven over, see people completely ignore the cart-path only rules or not follow the cart signs on the course. 

I know cart rules can be an inconvenience to both the members and their guests but we sometimes have to make a compromise to ensure the course is protected while any inconvenience is minimized. In order to ensure the course is in the best possible condition all the times it is necessary to restrict carts to protect it from suffering damage from the traffic after it rains. The easiest way to do this would be to close the entire course to carts, which becomes a major inconvenience for everyone so the best compromise to get carts out is to create rules to minimize the potential for damage.

I have four main sets of cart rules:

1. Worst case, cart path only; I use this when we have excessive rain and the course has had no time to dry out, or in the winter when the grass is not growing and therefore most susceptible to damage as recovery is at its slowest.
2. Cart path only with some open fairways for traffic; I use this when the course has started to dry out and certain fairways are dry enough for carts while others are still too wet and damage can occur. The worst fairways being 7, 8, 11, 13 tee side & 15-18. Usually when this rule is in place I will recheck the course during the day, opening up more areas as they dry out.
3. Follow signs and traffic stakes; At this point the course is dry enough to let carts scatter but there are still some areas that are too saturated and where damage can occur.
4. Best case: Scatter!

I set the rules by driving the entire course in each morning after a rainfall and seeing how just how wet areas are. Now that we have three seasons behind us it is pretty easy to set the course up for carts as I know the main areas that I need to keep carts out of. However, at times, it is still necessary to close the entire course as it is not practical to let carts out due to the fairways (and/or roughs) being just too wet. Some of the fairways drain quicker than others and therefore carts can be let out on them sooner than others. I often get the argument that “it’s just me and one cart, I won’t do that much damage”, however, while that may be the case, if someone else turns up, then we would have to let them out also and suddenly it’s not just one cart. The following is a picture of the damage carts leave when driven through areas that are too wet.

I have also been asked if it’s “is it ok if we just stay in the rough” and again there are other factors to consider. The first is that some of our roughs are very steep (and besides the safety implications) when the carts ride in these areas they slide, tearing the turf and causing damage, secondly when cart traffic is concentrated in many areas of the roughs it causes compaction, wear and thin turf usually along the edge of the fairways which as most will agree is the worst place to have thin turf and a bad lie.

Here is a couple of pictures from alone 7 fairway bunker. There was a lot of traffic in the rough between the bunker and the fairway and it caused the turf to thin out. I added stakes to prevent carts from driving there and the results were striking (although notice the wear then moved onto the fairway....)

Another issue, especially in the winter, is recovery time and I need to factor that into the equation also. Therefore some of the damage that can be tolerated during the summer cannot be tolerated during the winter because the grass is not growing and therefore cannot recover as quickly as it would when actively growing, hence the rules may change a little from season to season.

My goal is to ensure that everyone can get out to enjoy the course with the minimum amount of inconvenience as possible, while also ensuring there is minimal damage to the course.

Weather and Irrigation

A large part of my life is consumed by the weather and how it affects my day-day decisions. My wife thinks I’m obsessed with it as I check it so much!  At LedgeRock we subscribe to a weather service along with the regular internet based information. The weather service provides reliable long range while the radars etc are best at letting you know what’s coming short term.  It plays such as large part as it controls when I can get work done on the course, depending on what is coming, disease pressure can be monitored and applications can be made/prepared for/held off as needed and of course the general stress to the turf, especially during the summer months.
Watching the forecast lets me know when to water. If I see that rain is imminent I will make the previous watering last a little longer to make sure we don’t overwater, similarly long range forecasts help timing irrigation cycles to run out when it rains. The greens here are USGA spec which is a perched water table system. This means that they drain freely but also can keep a reserve of water in them. It is essential they are maintained properly and water management is key. They require deep soaking and then let dry out to have them work optimally.  My assistants use a moisture meter toward the end of the drying cycle to know when to water. We are able to tell where the dry spots are before they appear so can handwater them a little more in the morning to get them through the day. Once the greens start to uniformally dry out I will irrigate them again to re-initiate the cycle.
A number of the greens also have sensors built into them that provide salinity, moisture and temperature. Since they don’t move they only provide a snapshot but are a useful tool in that they can alert me to an issue before I would normally see it. The temperature function has become very useful also to know when the growth is shutting down or starting up which means I know when to start and stop fertilizing them etc which saves money and also helps make agronomic decisions easier as I know when the plant is actively growing. Here are a couple of articles about how they have been helpful at LedgeRock:

Golfdom Feb 2012

Superintendent Magazine Nov 2012

Here is a graph from the Toro Turfguard sensors showing the temperature, moisture and salinity for July 2012. (Note the moisture is not percentage moisture in the soil, it is the percentage of a user preset minimum). Salinity is not much of an issue at LedgeRock however it is interesting to see it spike once in a while after a high salt content fertilizer is applied.

This is a sensor being installed

The fairways and roughs are native soils so are managed differently. The soils here are ok but in most areas are hard to re-wet once they dry out. I use wetting agents to help make them take water better so during the summer months I can let them dry out. I find it a lot better for the plant to shut down and go dormant (ie brown) than try and make it stay green and this battle eventually has it give up and die…… The last really dry summer was 2010 and all our turf that browned out, came back after the first rain – we did not have to reseed or sod any areas. I certainly would never just turn the water off and let the entire property turn brown as that would be bad also but keeping it alive with minimal water and letting the plants that want to shut down, do so, works really well and the course plays exceptionally well.All this gets thrown out the window in summer like 2011 & 12 when the rains came in August and never let up…… Looking back at our weather station records for 2012 (our station went online in August) you can see just how wet the fall has been. July had been exceptionally dry and the course played extremely well, since then it has had very little chance to dry out.

LedgeRock’s weather station can be accessed on WeatherUnderground - it is constantly updated unless we have one of our (frequent) power outages. When this happens I have to manually update it and restart the auto updating.Lastly the irrigation system at LedgeRock is the latest available. Toro were reading the release of their latest controllers and irrigation heads as LedgeRock was bring built so I was able to get them and ensure the system we were installing would not be immediately out of date. Since then Toro has launched a new operating system which is infinitely more user friendly than the old software and gives us full control over the entire system down to the second!!  Now tweaks to the irrigation cycles can be made in an instant and ensures that we conserve water and ensure playability does not suffer from too much water.

My Philosophy of Golf Course Maintenance

The best place to start on anything is at the beginning. When I was first hired at LedgeRock, Mr Styer asked me to come up with my Philosophy of Golf Course Maintenance, which somewhat doubled as our standards of maintenance. He used it to show prospective members what LedgeRock was about and what was planned for the course conditioning. Revisiting it 8 years later and the fundamentals are still the same, although improved on in some cases.

While that was written mainly as a marketing tool it did represent the standard we expected the course to be maintained and the proof is what you see during the summer so this post is more to provide information of some of the maintenance practices that occur throughout the year and why I do things certain ways. I will cover each of these in more detail later, so in order to keep readers from falling asleep, a summary of each will suffice for now.

One of the items that was decided on very early was the playability of the course was priority and it should play hard and fast. That meant a little brown turf is tolerated provided the players get good ball roll and the course plays fun, especially considering how tough it can be, every yard counts! We can control how much water we put down but unfortunately have no control over mother nature’s input so this item is very had to keep consistent when she plays her hand. Just remember brown turf isn’t a bad thing.

Next for playability is how the greens play; I manage our greens without growth regulators (which is rare these days) and to do so requires that the crew pay a lot of attention to them to have them run at the speeds they do. By doing this they sometimes look a little thin especially when the (black) algae appears but this is nothing to worry about provided they remain to putt extremely true and smooth, their playability is my biggest concern. I’ll explain later in detail in another post why I manage them this way.

Soil/plant health: When I started as a superintendent I relied on the old mantra of feed the soil and everything else will fall into place. Being a new construction and having moved a lot of soil in the process, they definitely needed some work but I soon realized I was running in circles as when one nutrient would be in balance it knocked another out…… Once they were in decent shape (a nice average) I just started concentrating on the surface which let’s face it is all golfers are really concerned about!!! Since then I haven’t looked back and the turf is healthy and can do  pretty much anything that is asked of it.

General aesthetics: The big one to most people – the visual aesthetic when you drive in, walk up on a tee box etc. I believe that everything should be as perfect as possible at all times, especially the items that attract the eye and try to ensure that as many details as possible are taken care of. There are always more items that can be done but it would take unlimited resources so I have to work within the budget to ensure that they are kept to a minimum. Sometimes I do miss little things and am appreciative of when members let me know and in a few instances where we know about it but can’t address for some reason or another I can let them know it is on my list.

Our maintenance budget is very good to provide and exceed the required standards. It should be noted that no two golf courses are the same so comparing budgets – while a good indicator of general costs – the details need to be looked into. LedgeRock is a very difficult course to look after with large areas that require handwork which in turn costs more to maintain than a course without them. I search for better ways to do things and save as much money as possible ensuring I can do more with the budget that’s provided and get to items that may previously be overlooked.

Over time I’ll detail these items in more detail, but to sum up my general philosophy is to provide the members with first class conditions with playability taking priority. 

The First Post!!

Welcome to the maintenance blog for LedgeRock Golf Club. I tossed the idea of starting one around a number of times in the past to find the best method to communicate what is going on around the course and why I do things the way I do. I kept arriving back at a blog being the best method but I wanted to make sure I would have the time to keep it current and updated regularly. I also wanted the ability to post from the field rather than make notes and then have to come in to post it. Twitter and Facebook seemed like ok options but I find Twitter fussy and FB more of a social platform. The newsletter worked as a nice way to highlight items, although it was more of a ‘heads-up’ than a timely continual update. The blast emails worked well whenever there has been an issue that necessitated immediate notification.

With the creation of the Golf Advisory Panel (GAP) this past fall, I decided to revisit the blog idea since most of the topics & concerns and subsequent discussions were items that had been looked at before by myself or the board at one time or another. Now that the membership has grown the older methods are no longer as useful as they have been so the best way to bridge the lack knowledge of what we do on the course and why I do certain things certain ways is to have it easily accessible.  Although I had started the blog page a year or so ago (although not adding any content), coming back to it revealed that Google actually has been at work, making it a more friendly platform and now I can text updates to it, so it covers the aspects of what I was looking for.

As I get going, I plan to provide insights to how I maintain the course and why I do things that seem different or annoying!! I’m going to apologize upfront if I ramble on as I tend to get excited talking about what we do here (ok so I can be a turf-nerd!!). Along with these longer more detailed updates, my plan is to post short updates regularly as I see things in the field that I feel warrant attention and then I can elaborate as needed later.  Finally if anyone has a question on a post, anything I’m doing, not doing, a topic you have a question on or anything else related to the course or its maintenance just send me an email alan@ledgerockgolf.com