Growing Environments

This year has been unique in its own way. The cold and dry Spring set back the normal development of turf, and the Spring “flush” didn’t occur until the week of the Wally Mund Invite. Fast forward to a much warmer and humid summer than normal, and we not only see the after affects of that late development, but now we’re experiencing the differences in unique growing environments throughout the property.

Each hole on the golf course has its own growing environment. Take that a step further and each tee, fairway, green, and bunkers have their own as well. The amount of sunlight/shade, air flow, temperature, humidity, exposure, soil composition, natural drainage, etc., will create a different growing condition – for better and for worse. It is literally impossible for a 100 year golf course to have every feature on every hole play the same. I know that’s how we want to present it to you, and how golfers want to digest it but it’s not reality. A year like this is showing us which areas of the golf course have the best and worst growing environments.

Some of our poorest growing environments we cannot do anything about. For example, the 6th green, 7th tee and green all have trees to the South of them, on the perimeter of the property. The trees are needed for obvious reasons but they cast detrimental morning shade that hinder ideal growing environments and even seed germination (7th tee), which is why that tee has so many unrecovered divots.

The trees also create a stagnant area of the course, that gets little, to no, air flow. On a year like this, with extended heat and humidity, lack of air flow creates extremely high turf disease pressure. Certain bunkers (#6, 12) have had disease breakouts strictly because they do not have enough air flow. We don’t treat bunker faces preventively and in a year like this, it shows you how important air flow is.

The first green is surrounded by trees, is down in a hollow, and gets no morning sunlight or air flow because the trees to the right of the green provide protection from range balls hitting the homes. We cannot rectify the growing environment of 1 green so it will never be as strong as other greens on the course. This year, it’s easy to see that.

 

The putting green is a great example of us rectifying one poor growing environment with the installation of drainage, but we cannot fix the shade issue from the clubhouse. Below is a picture taken at 9:30am and a section of the green is still in the shade. Guess where everyone walks onto the putting green from getting your clubs? Right in that area. That area will always be weaker than not only other areas of the putting green itself, but on the course as well.

Certain areas of the golf course take on a lot of water with the natural drainage patterns. Once they take on water, certain areas struggle to shed that water because of topography. 6 fairway is a perfect example of taking ALL of the water from 5 fairway and then having the disadvantage of being one of the flattest fairways on the course. Without drainage in this fairway (it has it), there probably wouldn’t be much grass on it. But it will always play softer and wetter than the other holes.

Same with lower 3 fairway. It acts like a bowl to the surrounding areas, including the upper part of the fairway. This area will always be softer than its own approach.

The same with 15 fairway/approach. The water table of the pond on that hole is 4″ below the surface, but is constantly seeping into the fairway, under the surface. We have invested significant amounts of resources in topdressing and drainage in this fairway but it will always be wet because of its growing environment.

Even the back of 10 green, and it’s slower development from the green expansion in 2020. Just the morning shade alone is slowing down that development, and preventing it from performing at the same level as the rest of the green. It’s hard to imagine that 10 green has any growing environment issues, because by the time you get to the 10th hole, it’s already is the sun. Morning sunlight is critical for high performance.

Now the 14th green has all of the previous negative growing environments I’ve mentioned combined. It has extended morning shade. It takes on massive amounts of water from the surroundings, and literally no air flow. What makes it unique and great from an architectural standpoint, also hurts it from an agronomy side.

Combine that with sodding it during the restoration project, and this year the negatives are winning the battle over performance. We’ve lost a decent amount of turf on that green in the past 3 weeks becasue of the heat and humidity. Being in the bowl, the humidity level is twice as high as the other greens and it’s humid 24/7. The Poa that we did have died in that envrionment. The sod layer in the green is really hurting the roots from gas exchange/breathing. Unfortunately once that turf stand thinned, algae crept in. Algae thrives in humidity, but it creates a barrier for even less gas exchange to occur, furthering the suffocation of turf. Two weeks ago, we verticut the surface and applied some topdressing sand. That helped but not enough.

Tomorrow, Monday 7/28, we’ll topdress the green again, and this time, solid tine it with a small tine to help break holes through the sod layer, helping bust up the algae, and increasing the gas exchange/drainage through the sod layer.

The green will eventually get over the “hump” and performance will improve, it just needs more inputs to get there, much more than the other greens on the course, given its growing environment. I tried treating the green like the others as much as possible, but this season’s weather has overcome it. We will not mow the green post-topdressing, but only roll it, until the turf grows through the sand. You will see improved playability shortly after, and the forecast looks promising for some relief and a quick recovery.

Thanks for being patient as we offset the challenging conditions with the increased inputs it needs.

Mike Manthey