The Cost of Strategy

[Justin_Zook]

So most of us here love wide fairways.  We are capitalist in nature.  We want options when it comes to playing the hole and we love using our heads when it comes to the strategy of playing a hole.  

So the question is..."What is the cost per acre of maintaining a fairway?"  Looking at Augusta, their fungicide costs must be enormous given how many acres of fairways they have (when the course is not set up for the Masters.)

So do we not see courses like Augusta anymore because of how much it costs to maintain fairways?  

Does anyone have any figures conditional on how well the fairways are maintained?

[Pete Lavallee]

If you discount the cost in manpower to mow the fairway more often, doesn't maintaining what would be returned to rough cost just as much?

[Justin_Zook]

Pete,

I am not really talking about say, a club who looks at the costs of maintaining a fairway vs. rough.  I don't necessarily disagree with you that just continuing to maintain rough is probably, in net present terms, similar to that of resodding grass.

What I am saying is that if a course were to be built tomorrow.  There are 2 plans, one with big fairways with lots of options, and one with narrow fairways, only having maybe 2 options, does a club look at that and say, "It's going to be too expensive to maintain all that closely cut turf."  

In strict operational terms, the cost of treating, watering and mowing rough, versus the cost of treating, watering and mowing fairways, which one is cheaper?  Do clubs look at this?  Do clubs that are just getting a start look at this?  

[Justin_Zook]

Just to clarify, it isn't as if the club is pondering whether or not to change what already exists.  They have a clean slate, they can do either or.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Justin,
In the Northern climates the cost of maintaining 60 acres of blue grass fwys is less than or equal to the cost of maintaining 30-40 acres of bent. So the grass type plays a huge role in overall cost.
In the south I've long maintained that the cost of maintaining fwys vs roughs is not as big a gap as most think. Especially if a club is willing to use volume mowing equipment. But if the members have to have the stripped, overseed look then the cost difference between maintaining fwys and roughs is significant.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I have read the cost of maintaining fine turf is 5-6K per acre, and the cost of maintaining native/natural/unmowed areas is about $500 an acre.  If the change out is putting 10 acres in a relatively unmaintained area, savings could be $50K per year.

[Stanley Thompson]

Never worry about money, once you worry about money the architecture will suffer. The job of the architect is to create a masterpiece; if you’re over budget then you apologize. Once you show them what you have created, all will be forgiven

[SL_Solow]

Jeff, I'm not sure your answer is responsive.  If fairway acreage is reduced the area that becomes rough will be the "first cut".  While it may require less maintenance, it will not be "unmaintained."  Of course if reduced fairway widths lead to thinner overall corridors (fairway plus "maintained" rough) the correlation may hold.

[Jim Thompson]

I think there are a lot of takes on this issue.  Here are some that came to mind after reading this post this morning then mowing rough for the first time this year all day.

1)  I can't help but think that excessive width comes from designing holes from tee to gren rather than from green to tee.  Internal contouring of green sites and a willingness to use the edge of the fairway as the beneficial target could limit the cost for the same strategic effects.

2)  Expanded fairway cuts (internal rough at 1 1/2" or less) could give many the same playability of width at a reduced fee.  We are actually adjusting our mow patterns with some of this thought approach.

3)  Native areas are not no maintainance areas.  If you want your natives to not weed species stands you have to do hand work in them and spot treat on a regular basis.  the cost is less than rough but not quite as dramatic as Jeff suggests, at least not to my standard.

I've got a couple more ideas that can accomplish this without dramatic increases in turf costs, but need to draw them out to explain.  

Cheers!

JT

[Jim Johnson]

What gives? I just used Google Planimeter to measure Augusta's fairways (although #1 and #18 are very faint in the photo) and my rough calculations amount to a grand total of 38.97 acres of fairways. And I tried to include what looks like chipping areas around the greens, and the "fairway" on #12 between the tees and  the creek and over to the 13th hole.

I always thought that the fairway acreage was something like 75 or 80. The copyright on the imagery is 2005, so it must be fairly recent. Admittedly, it could have been taken a week before the Masters started that year, but I tried to be generous in making my "points", and on some holes you just can't get much more fairway in between those trees, so even if you added several more acres, it still only runs around 40 acres or so.



JJ

[Jim Johnson]

Further to my post, I had the pleasure of enjoying the Monday practice round of the Masters this year. It was the first time I had ever set foot on the property, and while overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, I couldn't get over the "green" look while walking along its fairways. You either stood on pine needles/straw/cones under those awesome Georgia pines, or you were walking on grass. No in between. Well, okay, there were a few concrete pathways!
But, it was unreal how much grass there was all over the place.

If my calculations above are correct, or close to being correct, perhaps we're all bamfoozled by the immense area of manicured grass on the property, and having been told over the years that they have acres and acres and acres of fairways, we believe it because all we seem to see on the course is grass.

JJ

[Tom_Doak]

JJohnson:  Augusta USED to have 75-80 acres of fairways when they mowed everything short to the tree lines.  The figure you cited today is probably close to correct since the "first cut" is 1/4 of the width of the clearing on either side.

I've done a course or two with 80 acres of fairway and it is a hard figure to achieve ... they are REALLY wide!

[Jim Johnson]

Tom,

Is that true Tom? Like I said in my post, I was pretty generous in sticking my "points" on the Planimeter, and in that Google photo it looks like there isn't much more space between the tree lines to put in much more fairway.

On another note, I thought I recalled you stating on another thread [or perhaps it was in a magazine article somewhere] that you had 90 acres of fairway at the Rawls Course in Texas. Is that correct? If so, wow! It's hard to imagine that much fairway, especially after walking ANGC during the practice round, and its "38.97 acres" of fairway. I thought "38.97" was quite a bit, actually.

JJ

[Tom_Doak]

Jim:  39 acres IS a lot of fairway, ask any superintendent.  In the 1980's when fairway maintenance got expensive, clubs in the northeast tried to prune back their fairway acreage, and 23 acres was for some reason considered the standard.  Crystal Downs had even less than that!

I don't know exactly how much fairway acreage The Rawls Course has but it is a lot.  We sprigged 105 acres of TifSport including the practice range, and nearly all of that is mowed tight, so I guessed 90 acres of fairway, but it's probably more like 80-85 once you leave a small strip of mowed rough before you change grasses.