Crazy about the brown

[A_Clay_Man]

At seeing that great picture of the 11th at Hidden Creek I was glolified to see the use of the brown grass.
Maybe cause it's at the root of my struggle here at Pinon Hills to get them to recognize that the brown on the perimeter of the field of play is desireable from an aesthetic as well as a playability aspect.

To me this use of not only the lines but the colors too are where the art should be headed always.

[JSlonis]

A Clay Man,

Maybe you can steal the UPS slogan and go to your next Green Committee meeting and ask...

"What can BROWN do for you?"  Then be prepared to list all the postives for having a color other than "overwatered green" on the course.

Also...if you were referring to the picture that is on the main page of the Hidden Creek site...that is not the 11th hole, it is the 4th.

[Slag_Bandoon]

What shade of brown?   Tan, muave, sienna, roan? Hopefully not Brown 25.

It has come to my attention that a group of scientific agronomists in Wales have created some concoction that makes grass green.  Even if it dies it is stays green.  I think it's called StayGreen.  Anybody heard of this? Details?

[TEPaul]

Slag:

You're a genius feller; I think you just solved this decades old soft and lush green problem.

Nobody is ever gonna convince anybody to go to brown golf courses. The word alone has terrible, God awful connotations and lots of them.

But Sienna! Now that's something anyone could buy into. I have no idea what color it is but the word sounds great! It sounds pretty, it sounds romantic, it even sounds sophisticated. It sounds ten time better than green and 100 times better than brown.

I was about to write a "firm and fast" memo for my club but now I'm going to write a "sienna" memo and I know it will be immediately and unanimously accepted.

I sort of liked the sound of "roan" but everyone in Philadelphia knows there's no conceivable way to grow roan grass in Philadelphia.

[A_Clay_Man]

It was the picture on the favorite par 3 hole thread on page 2.

 Perhaps I assumed too much.

Sienna is priceless and obviously fits better in Philly than here in the wild wild west. Tan is the best i could do or maybe caucasian, whatever the hell that is. and If I use the word beige I wouldn't blame them for put'in me on a rail.

[Dunlop_White]

Firm and fast (and green?) would be great stuff for the middle of play, but I think this post is more about the perimeter of play, especially since Hidden Creek is used as an example.

Brown, native grasses on the perphery against a sea of smooth, emerald green grass fairways will become sharply defined and visually accentuated promoting texture and visual contrast. Its the natural look, if integrated properly. Desirable course locations, which were once unnoticeable, will emerge and become visually apparent with the use of native fescues.

Coore and Crenshaw incorporate the textures and the contrasts magnificently.

[A_Clay_Man]

Beautifully put Dunlop!

I think Blackwolf Run was the first place I really fell in love with the browned out love grasses that use to adorn some of the mounding, that first year. I also recall how sad I was to see it gone the following season.

Texture is sexy!

[RJ_Daley]

Adam, it is hard to imagine why the residents of your area seem to gravitate to the luch green idea.  Is it because their world is made up of so much that is tan and brown?  I would think that they would want to incorporate the lovely subtle hues that are so natural to their environment there in the "land of enchantment".  Even Sherwin Williams pays tribute to the lovely textures of that area with colors like "adobe brown" and "pueblo tan" and "mesa sand" or "sage" or "Santa Fe beige".  Just take your super to the Sherwin Williams store and point out the color chart!  Or take him for a ride up into the foot hills and drop him off with a short ration of water to get him to appreciate the beauty in conservation thereof...

[Don_Mahaffey]

RJ,
While there are certainly those who prefer the lush green look, I think you'll find that in Adam's area, and much of the west, outside of CA, most people are very water conscious and are leaders in the use of native flora. The problem is, Adam's area has been in a record drought and you wouldn't get the native grass look in the perimeters without supplemental irrigation. Thus, defeating the purpose of native, no?
I've seen a lot of native areas in the west that folks from the Midwest and east find unappealing because they almost always think native means having that meadow and wildflower look. There are courses in the west that do that, but it's often manufactured and managed, including the use of irrigation in out of play areas trying to achieve a certain look. Not exactly great conservation in my book.

[Slag_Bandoon]

Here are some rich, almost pornographic browns. . .

     http://www.mantelshop.com/stain1.jpg

[A_Clay_Man]

Don is correct as usual that if you want anything to grow here you have to irrigate it. Especially if you want any veg in or near your bunkers.
But the problem is not the native areas, as there are plenty of those. One of KD's signature is his use of mounding. While at other course he may have overdone the containment, here I dont see it as so. It is the tops of those mounds that need to have some brown to really tie-in the rest of the state and more locally the native ares. The problem as i see it is as dick points out, the people. The powers that be, are baseball nuts and have a serious case of the Augusta syndrome, along with that avoiding unemployment condition the super must feel. Plus, having no clue about the art or the taste to know better, is part and parcel of the land of entrapment.

We played today and it was magnificiant the browns had an almost pinkish hue to them. Probably from some recent prcip 1/4 inch and it was a big deal.

[RJ_Daley]

That or pink snow mold!

[redanman]

But Sienna! Now that's something anyone could buy into.

One of the best things about my US stamp collecting as a kid was learning the colors.

Ochre.  WOW!  Now THAT'S a brown.

And I always liked Carmine red.

[A_Clay_Man]

Dick, I don't know about snow mold. I can tell you that we had about an inch back in mid december and it stayed on the fairways for less than three weeks. Is that enough to cause mold? Plus with low low low humidity rates mold is tough to grow here. Or so I thought.


Maybe that Pink was sienna? If I could ever get Sheryl out there I'd have an arteest's opinion.

[Slag_Bandoon]

 
  
    www.agolfarchitect.com/photos15.htm      

  Hey Tony, in your TSR brand there's a 63 below the slash.  Was meinst das, herr Ristola?  Fiercig yahre alt?  Ein grosse geburtstag, eh?   Salud!  
  (No fluent polyglot am I)  

  BTW... Tony's website's yellow/brown infusion is sienna(ish)/ochre(ish).

[Tony Ristola]

Slag: Ugh...Genau. Vierzig Jahre.  Man bin ich schnell alt geworden!
 
The photo you selected is of the only course I've done in Deutschland with fairway irrigation.  The course was built along a river and they required the system for insurance purposes.  If freak rains hit during grow-in (like they had this summer and caused the mass flooding in the east and north) the insurance company would have covered the reconstruction/clean-up/reseeding...but not without it.

During the first year they let the fairways get hard and fast, but from what some members have told me it's being over-watered.  The solution is simple and I hope one day do it...turn off the fairway irrigation.  The region gets enough precipitation.