waste areas and fescue

[Tommy Williamsen]

In recent years I have noticed that stray shots on newer courses land less a and less in rough and more in bunkers, waste areas, and tall fescue.  It seems that there is a trend to to build different kinds of trouble than just bunkers, tall rough, or water.  
Has this been your experience?

[Tommy Williamsen]

Just one more try then I'll take the hint.
Do you see the use of fescue and waste areas being a trend in new course design?

[wsmorrison]

Tommy,

I don't see as many newer courses as a lot of people do on this site, but I do see a lot of classic courses.  Even on older courses that never had expanses of fine fescues, many are going that route today.  I think it is a look that many enjoy and the reduced maintenance expense is a favorable result.

[RSLivingston_III]

With technology shifting the game to a high, drop and stick it with every club in the bag (except the putter) and having significatly moved away from a predominately ground game, it is apperant the scale of the hazards had to increase to capture balls. Much of it is also the trend towards natural and classic course design, especially the use of more fescue.
It is apparant that the uses are defined by the course philosophy and type.
I think our distinguished archies here can add much to this thread.

[Jeff Doerr]

It seems to me that grass waste areas are a highly functional and cost effective hazard.

From a super view it seems to require little effort, except for the once a year mow down.

The visual of a sea of tall grass is very beautiful.

The challenge I see is that courses sometimes have this in areas that challenge the high handicap player too much with forced carry situations, etc.

Ideally I see these used best to punish the errant long drive.

[Jeff Doerr]

Follow up to my previous post...

In my opinion, Rustic Canyon is a good example of well used waste/grass areas. They are penal on drives through the fairway, diagonals, etc. - but often can be recovered from.




The Cupp Course at The Reserve has grass islands that often may as well be inverted ponds. If the ball can be found, it usually cannot be played - much like a shallow pond or creek! These waste areas kill the high handicap player and usually don't challenge the better player. On the plus side they are very beautiful and very intimidating.

[paul cowley]

We use fescues and other so called 'naturals' mainly in what we determine to be out of the general play areas....if you hit it sideways you might well be in fescue [many choices here] or centipede/carpet/broomsedge, or common bermuda/ garnished with others [cord grasses et al].....wish we were doing more with cacti and wild pineapple and marram grass though...but we are working on that.

[Mark_Fine]

These "low maintenance" areas can be anything but that.  Jim Skorulski just gave a nice talk at the Atlantic City conference about the positives and negatives of naturalizing areas of your golf course.  Most here would have found it very informative.  Myopia Hunt for example, has to do routine controlled burns to keep the weeds down and prevent the areas from getting over grown.  

Personally, I love the look of native areas and "when and where appropriate" include them in many of my Master Plans  especially in out of play areas.  Where they are in play, however, much more maintenance than most think is required to keep them playable.  

I should add that most of the Golden Age architects did not like long grass as a hazard.  It slowed down play and lead to a loss of golf balls.   It was Mackenzie who once said, "Narrow fairways bordered by long grass make bad golfers.  They destroy the harmony of the game and all freedom of play."  

But like all types of hazards - everything in moderation  

Mark

[Tom_Doak]

I personally think that areas of unmowed grass are way overused on modern courses.  (Jeff's second picture made me shudder.)

Sometimes that's what you're starting with and it makes sense to leave it.  Barnbougle was 100% marram grass to start with, and we only cleared as much of it as necessary to make the course playable, nearly all of which is mowed at fairway height.

Some of it has to do with technology and safety issues.  The farther everyone hits the ball, the more land the course requires, and the more pressures from the cost of maintenance to leave some of the ground "unmaintained".  It probably would have been better if this had just been left "undisturbed" as well, but as new courses move further away from good natural sites, nobody wants soybean fields between the holes and long fescues seem to be the only solution anybody can think of.  (Not so imaginative for a bunch of trained landscape architects, is it?)  

There are also awkward spaces between one fairway and the next to allow a safety buffer for golfers and for the cart paths ... you rarely see a modern course where you can hit it into another fairway, as you could on nearly all courses before 1930.  Personally, I think the bigger spaces between the holes are overkill, and that's a big part of the "cause" of this trend.

To me, the solution would just be to put some minimal maintenance on these areas.  Keeping them lean and mean (not fertilizing or watering much) and gang-mowing them once every 3-4 weeks in season (until they start shutting down because of drought stress) would avoid the unplayability issues and really wouldn't cost a heck of a lot.  But members will start complaining that it looks weedy ... that's the other part of the reason you see ridiculous amounts of hay, because if it's turf instead the members can't help themselves from wanting it to look perfect.

Back when I worked for Pete Dye, he was experimenting with Centipede for southern roughs.  It provided a great textural contrast, and it grew really slowly so it cost very little to maintain.  But it disappeared at Long Cove because irrigation and fertigation overspray, and golf cart traffic, wiped it out.

[paul cowley]

Tom D....we are still experimenting with centipede, but on a low [no] fertilization and little water schedule and it seems to be doing well as long as we can control the maintenance, but I fear that down the way some eager superintendent will want to make it 'green'.

On one of our courses we are roughing up the out of play areas so that they can only be mowed seasonally by a bush hog in an attempt to preserve our design intent after we are no longer around.

[Todd Rohrer]

Wow.  Jeff's picture of The Reserve brought me back to too many conversations (read debates/arguments) we used to have about the fescue mounds on that course.  I was involved on the management side (the side where talent is not required!).  
Although those mounds made for beautiful landscape photos, Mark's quoting MacKenzie about "freedom of play" really hit home.  To say nothing of lost balls...
Tom's point about minimal maintenance seems right on.  Unfortunately, when the Cupp Course was built, irrigation was laid right through the grass mounds.  In no time, instead of having pretty, but sparse fescue, where a golfer could find his ball and play on, we had six inches of ryegrass, resulting in the equivalent of the inverted ponds to which Jeff referred when posting that photo.
All of the sudden we had even slower play, local rules were being created, and too many of the solutions required ownership to break out the ol' wallet...

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tom Doak, didn't Pete us centipede at DeBadeau (sp)?   When I played there a few years ago I seem to remember that they were going to kill it because it was so thick, gnarly and hard to play out of.  Besides you could look for a ball all day.

[jeffwarne]

While I'm certainly not technically qualified as a superintendant to provide expertise about long grasses, I  have had the opportunity to work with several of the top superintendants in the game in regards to management of taller grasses regarding maintenance and playability.

Many modern courses in my opinion have overused fescue and so called native grasses.
Properly maintained and presented ,it can be quite visually appealing. I spent 6 years at a club where fescue was the logo so proper presentation of it can be visually dramatic.

There are myths however about these grasses being low or no maintenance. I've personally witnessed hundreds of man hours and multiple thousands of dollars being spent on fescue.
Those who think it is low maintenance are either fortunate to have ideal soil and climate conditions or don't know what they're talking about.
There are also myths about it being placed in "out of play areas"
There's no such thing.

Many of the average members love how it looks but only when someone else's ball is in it.
Fescue grows pretty nasty in the spring and early summer  even without any irrigation or fertilization.
Many will say it's overwatered or over fertilized, but it's hard to control April and May rains.

At my home club we have cleared trees revealing beautiful ,natural groundcovers.(blueberry, bayberry, mosses,rocky sand areas,ground hugging mountain laurel,bluestem)
It is a look unlike all other area courses and is a result of merely revealing undisturbed groundcovers on a geographically and topographically unique site)
Yet it is amazing how many members and guests will ask if we are going to plant fescue in these truly natural areas.
......So we can look like all the other clubs-and spend dollars planting and maintaining it.

By the way, I don't have a problem with limited and/or strategic use of fescue or actual native grasses (particularly if marked as a hazard) I just hate to see fescue used as defacto groundcover for cheap thrill asthetics and spoken about as being no maintenance.

As far as centipede, I worked at Long Cove in the late 80's when they were considering eliminating the centipede. It was very visually appealing and not penal at all where it was healthy, but extremely penal where mole crickets and foot traffic had reduced it to mud and sand.
Carts were restricted to paths shortly after the course opened (1981)to protect the centipede. Carts were never allowed off paths the three years I worked there (88-91) so they clearly weren't the culprit. The centipede did not tolerate the foot traffic between tees and greens either. (although I can't speak definitively whether that was an irrigation/fertigation issue as Tom Doak suggests)

I do know at every course I've been to with centipede there were mole cricket and turf wear problems with foot traffic so whatever supposed maintenance mistakes that Long Cove made, other top courses were making as well.
Long Cove today has bermuda roughs and is not as visually attractive as it was with centipede.

[paul cowley]

In the places where foot or cart traffic wear becomes a problem, we are placing a porous crushed shell/sand surface.
Little spidery trails are evolving quite naturally....and they look good too.
So much that they have inspired me to dash off more than one Haiku about them!

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tom Doak, didn't Pete us centipede at DeBadeau (sp)?   When I played there a few years ago I seem to remember that they were going to kill it because it was so thick, gnarly and hard to play out of.  Besides you could look for a ball all day.

Jeff Warne wrote

As far as centipede, I worked at Long Cove in the late 80's when they were considering eliminating the centipede. It was very visually appealing and not penal at all where it was healthy, but extremely penal where mole crickets and foot traffic had reduced it to mud and sand.
Carts were restricted to paths shortly after the course opened (1981)to protect the centipede. Carts were never allowed off paths the three years I worked there (88-91) so they clearly weren't the culprit. The centipede did not tolerate the foot traffic between tees and greens either. (although I can't speak definitively whether that was an irrigation/fertigation issue as Tom Doak suggests)

Jeff, your description of Cebtipede does not fit the grass I encountered years ago at Debedoux on Pawly's Island.  Was it centipede or does anyone else know what it was?  It was punshing.

[paul cowley]

tommy you wrote;

" Jeff, your description of Cebtipede [centipede] does not fit the grass I encountered years ago at Debedoux [De Bordieu] on Pawly's [Pawleys] Island.  Was it centipede or does anyone else know what it was?  It was punshing [punishing]."

I took the liberty to help with the sp....you where starting to sound like a suth'ner .

Centipede is a grass that when established requires very little water or feeding, and in that state is very playable.
....but if you give it the opposite, it can indeed be a problem [as any lushness frequently can be].

[BCowan]

While I'm certainly not technically qualified as a superintendant to provide expertise about long grasses, I  have had the opportunity to work with several of the top superintendants in the game in regards to management of taller grasses regarding maintenance and playability.

Many modern courses in my opinion have overused fescue and so called native grasses.
Properly maintained and presented ,it can be quite visually appealing. I spent 6 years at a club where fescue was the logo so proper presentation of it can be visually dramatic.

There are myths however about these grasses being low or no maintenance. I've personally witnessed hundreds of man hours and multiple thousands of dollars being spent on fescue.
Those who think it is low maintenance are either fortunate to have ideal soil and climate conditions or don't know what they're talking about.
There are also myths about it being placed in "out of play areas"
There's no such thing.

Many of the average members love how it looks but only when someone else's ball is in it.
Fescue grows pretty nasty in the spring and early summer  even without any irrigation or fertilization.
Many will say it's overwatered or over fertilized, but it's hard to control April and May rains.

At my home club we have cleared trees revealing beautiful ,natural groundcovers.(blueberry, bayberry, mosses,rocky sand areas,ground hugging mountain laurel,bluestem)
It is a look unlike all other area courses and is a result of merely revealing undisturbed groundcovers on a geographically and topographically unique site)
Yet it is amazing how many members and guests will ask if we are going to plant fescue in these truly natural areas.
......So we can look like all the other clubs-and spend dollars planting and maintaining it.

By the way, I don't have a problem with limited and/or strategic use of fescue or actual native grasses (particularly if marked as a hazard) I just hate to see fescue used as defacto groundcover for cheap thrill asthetics and spoken about as being no maintenance.

As far as centipede, I worked at Long Cove in the late 80's when they were considering eliminating the centipede. It was very visually appealing and not penal at all where it was healthy, but extremely penal where mole crickets and foot traffic had reduced it to mud and sand.
Carts were restricted to paths shortly after the course opened (1981)to protect the centipede. Carts were never allowed off paths the three years I worked there (88-91) so they clearly weren't the culprit. The centipede did not tolerate the foot traffic between tees and greens either. (although I can't speak definitively whether that was an irrigation/fertigation issue as Tom Doak suggests)

I do know at every course I've been to with centipede there were mole cricket and turf wear problems with foot traffic so whatever supposed maintenance mistakes that Long Cove made, other top courses were making as well.
Long Cove today has bermuda roughs and is not as visually attractive as it was with centipede.

Jeff,

   Curious as to how the course u used to work for maintained their fescue?  I'd love to hear more positives vs negatives with maintaining fescue roughs.  It's possible that improvements in machinery has decreased maint costs.  It seems much easier cutting monthly then rough all the time. 

[jeffwarne]

Ben,
See Tom's response about mowing the area periodically.
That's the best solution, especially for areas with fertile soil, but most clubs don't want to do it because it lacks the visual appeal of waving gold fescue so treasured in photos.


The club I was at was located on fertile farmland, requiring much more "maintenance" to keep it playable.
Weeding, burning,cutting etc are required annually and the thing with fescue is that it's almost always "too something"(thick, thin, wet, weedy etc) unless planted sparsely/thinly on sandy and/or rocky unirrigated soil. And few have the patience to wait for it to grow in(3-5 years) under such conditions.