Interesting question, but Adam this is not exactly the type of subject that produces easy standardized answers that can be applied to every golf course. There're so many variables to consider from course to course---eg type of grass, region, soil type and structure, current type of maintenance practices, root depth etc, etc.
There have been a few pretty informative threads on this subject in the last month or so (they're probably on about page 35 now
).
It occured to me last fall I didn't really understand what dormancy is (and I probably still don't) or the significance of it in a firm and fast maintenance program. But I asked about five supers who are really into firm and fast and low irrigation and organics and they seemed to agree on what they told me about dormancy.
I can't even give you an exact definition for dormancy with grass but it seems that grass of the type of say the fairways of Fishers Island, Newport, Maidstone that do not have fairway irrigation systems can go into dormancy in the summer for perhaps weeks on end and turn a color of really light brown. But if it rains--presto---in a day or so that grass is green again.
That type of grass is conditioned to go into long periods of dormancy like that---essentially that type of grass is very deep-rooted and it's tough, resilient, Darwinian, natural.
But grass that has been conditioned to be dependent on regular or excessive irrigation (and chemicals) is not deep-rooted and consequently does not have a natural period of dormancy or it has a very short period of dormancy. Basically when it turns brown in a potentially very short period of time it can just crap out and die.
At least that's what I was told about dormancy last fall by some firm and fast supers.
Now S. Huffstetter is making some distinction between a condition he calls "drought tolerance" (apparently some form or condition of browning) and "dormancy". I don't know what that distinction would be but I expect him and others to tell us.
This entire subject of low irrigation (organics?) as opposed to excessive regular irrigation and excessive chemical dependency is a complex one. If you can take a course to regular firm and fast playing conditions and much lower irrigation and less chemicals it seems to pay big dividends in playability and also less expense in water and chemicals as well as grass that's a whole lot more inured to weather conditions such as heat and drought---eg grass that's deep-rooted, tough and less apt to die quickly.
That's the good news. The bad news is it may take the program 2-5 years to transition over excessively over-irrigated, chemical dependent grass to that wholly different far drier condition and during that transition there may be some significant turf loss.
The goal is to get to a point where basically the course's grass is so much more "Darwinian" (survival of the fittest) than the excessively irrigated, chemical dependent shallow-rooted lush grass we see today on so many courses.
But to give you some indication of irrigation differences---perhaps 20 years ago HVGC probably used something in the neighborhood of 20 million gallons of irrigation water per year and today they only use about 4-5 million, and a good deal of that is "syringing" which is quite different in application and effect on the grass than normal "irrigation". "Syringing" is a water application that's basically a horizontal spraying with a hose to cool the grass and not soak the roots structure as is normal "irrigation".