Greens in Arkansas

[RazorPiggie]

So we've been talking about the different greens courses need to have here in Arkansas. Its been pretty hot here this year but nothing too awful. Eagle Crest has lost several greens this year. They currently have 4 temp greens. I just don't understand how they continue to lose them every single summer.

In my opinion they are over watering and not allowing them to build up a deep root system. If you stick a divot tool in a green its just like sticking it in stand.

We have a membership and are debating whether or not to join next year because they lose their greens every summer and are doing nothing about it. Personally I don't think they will be in business in 5 years unless they change over to some type of hybrid Bermuda. Which is a shame because it really is a beautiful course. I wish the own would actually put some money back into it.

Thoughts?

[cosmodrum]

Centennial Valley put in champ bermuda last fall and we love them. Amazing how good they are for how young they are. We were playing on them in under 2 months from sprigging. Of course they were hard, but they weren't dead. They make a decent ball mark now, and they're starting to hold.

[HognitiveDissonance]

Doesn't Eagle Crest have traditional bent grass?
It's honestly just too hot to support that grass in most of Arkansas, not without much babying, and even that sometimes doesn't work.
Ironically, just up the hill in Fayetteville it's fine. But different climate zone in Alma...five degrees warmer on average.

Agree on Champion Bermuda. It has proven to be an excellent surface. Pleasant Valley CC and Rebsamen converted at the same time several years ago. Those greens are awesome. Only drawback at all is that they will go brown in the winter. But they putt fantastic. The other city courses in LR(Hindman and War Memorial) have also now converted.

The mini-verde grass like Burns Park has is pretty good too.

[pigture perfect]

We used to go to Rebsamen for our dandelion greens. Better than Turnip greens.

[waphill]

I was a golf course superintendent for 12 years, managing courses in Central AR and NWA. I think it's more to do with a dip in revenue and the golf industry as a whole.

Bent can be maintained beautifully in AR, and actually much farther south. I was an intern at Annondale just outside of Jackson, MS. We had Bent there. Even had a PGA event back when I worked there.

To maintain bent, it takes dedication from not only the Super, but GM, Golf pros, and membership. The golf industry has been hurting for some time. This has caused a lot of the public and lower level private clubs to have to cut back. Most of the time they will always cut the maintenance budget first. Even though rounds are down, the cost to maintain the course hasn't changed, probably even increased (inflation). When budgets are cut, the Super must cut corners some where.

I'm just assuming here, but I think a lot of superintendents cut out some of the hand watering. This can be detrimental to Bent during hot/humid summers. Back in the day I had a staff of guys just to hand water. I had 2-3 working every afternoon until the temps started cooling in the evening, 7 days a week, for the entire summer.

Too much water is the worst thing for Bent. This leads to a decrease in root density and length, as well as an increase in thatch and disease. If you see irrigation heads watering the Bent greens during the heat of the day, this is bad news. This overwatering creates a domino effect. A poor root zone means they must be watered more frequently. More frequent watering leads to a ton of fungal diseases. Eventually this will lead to dieback, and you can't seed Bent until the fall. If you've played on any greens that had a lot of black algae all over them, this is the end result of the domino effect.

Hand watering gives you the ability to water only the areas that actually need it during the heat of the day. You might have seen some blue spots on greens this summer. This is wilting due to heat stress. These spots need hand watering to cool. However, the entire green rarely does. If you pop the irrigation heads to cool these spots, you're watering the whole green, and overwatering a big portion of it.

[HognitiveDissonance]

This is exactly what happened to some bent greens at Hot Springs Village this summer.
It was a very wet summer, obviously. 15 inches of rain at HSV in August.
The combination of hot temps and copious rainfall led to fungal diseases taking over.
To cope they began closing some courses in the afternoon to rest the greens.
There for a while it was blazing hot, then a hard rain late afternoon, and therefore moist all night. Perfect breeding ground for fungus.
But this was an unusual summer.
Some of those greens are the worst I've ever seen them, and I've played there a long time. They weren't bad bad, just worse than usual.
Usually in the hot Arkansas summers, they manage to keep their bent grass greens going just fine. It's on the mtns, good breezes, and they hand water them and have the money and staff to do it. This summer was just too wet and hot.

[Hawgndaaz]

At some point, most courses in the state will be Bermuda. Bent just doesn't make economic sense anymore.

[waphill]

There for a while it was blazing hot, then a hard rain late afternoon, and therefore moist all night. Perfect breeding ground for fungus.

Not much you can do about this, other than go to the bar that afternoon! Late afternoon/evening moisture is the worst thing that can happen to bent. Fungal activity is at it's highest at that time of day.

This was one of the reasons I left the industry. You can do everything right, and have the course in amazing shape, and mother nature can still ruin all of that in a few days time. Can't control the weather.

I remember when I was an intern, and working at Annandale in MS (http://www.nicklaus.com/design/annandale). It was the week of the Southern Farm Bureau Classic, and we had the course immaculate. If you've ever walked a golf course the day before a big tournament, it's a beautiful thing. That Monday night, one heck of a rainstorm came in. Dumped massive amounts of water on  the course. It is a Nicklaus course, and he put a ton of bunkers on it. The sparkling white sand that was in the bunkers on Monday was turned into a brown clay mixture overnight. In hindsight, I should've changed majors that next semester!

[RazorPiggie]

Too much water is the worst thing for Bent. This leads to a decrease in root density and length, as well as an increase in thatch and disease. If you see irrigation heads watering the Bent greens during the heat of the day, this is bad news. This overwatering creates a domino effect. A poor root zone means they must be watered more frequently. More frequent watering leads to a ton of fungal diseases. Eventually this will lead to dieback, and you can't seed Bent until the fall. If you've played on any greens that had a lot of black algae all over them, this is the end result of the domino effect.

This is what I think EC is doing. It happens every single summer. Not as bad as this summer but still lose a couple every year.

[waphill]

On a somewhat related note, I drove by Valley View in Farmington last time I was in town. What the heck happened? It looked completely un-maintained and the greens were 70% dead.

[HognitiveDissonance]

On a somewhat related note, I drove by Valley View in Farmington last time I was in town. What the heck happened? It looked completely un-maintained and the greens were 70% dead.

Could be unrelated, but I read in the paper they were having a dispute with another party on who had rights to use the pond water. Course thinks they have the rights to use it for irrigation.

[Martygit]

So we've been talking about the different greens courses need to have here in Arkansas. Its been pretty hot here this year but nothing too awful. Eagle Crest has lost several greens this year. They currently have 4 temp greens. I just don't understand how they continue to lose them every single summer.

In my opinion they are over watering and not allowing them to build up a deep root system. If you stick a divot tool in a green its just like sticking it in stand.

We have a membership and are debating whether or not to join next year because they lose their greens every summer and are doing nothing about it. Personally I don't think they will be in business in 5 years unless they change over to some type of hybrid Bermuda. Which is a shame because it really is a beautiful course. I wish the own would actually put some money back into it.

Thoughts?

I've played EC a lot - most of the greens they lose in the summer are those that are in some sort of enclosed area - example - #2 - there's no breeze - but they water them just like they do on the greens up on top - I think the problem with EC is that the greens people don't know what they're doing  - which is not really surprising considering that the money people bailed a long time ago - they're simply trying to survive - but bent greens in Arkansas are really hard to maintain unless you have a greens person who knows what he's doing - I remember when the Golf Channel first came to Hardscrabble to televise one of the first (what is now Web.com but then, I think, was Nike) secondary PGA tournaments - it was August and the greens were in terrible shape - they spray painted them green for the TV coverage - For the past several years, we've not had a lot of problems with the greens except for those down in hollows - I noticed the other day that there are bare/brown spots on a couple of the greens down in the areas where the greens don't get wind - you just can't teach Mexicans how to take care of greens when you have to treat them individually