[Greg Murphy]

How does one manage gunch? I've played a few courses this year where, what was once thin, whispy, bunch rough that you could find and advance a ball from (with somewhat unpredictable results), is now invaded with bent and blue and who knows what else, resulting in virtual certain lost balls even steps off the fairway and no chance of recovery even if a ball is fortuitously found. I don't think it is an issue of overreaching irrigation, just a natural process after a few wetter than normal years. Does the area need to be renewed by fire? Chemical?

[Tyler Kearns]

Greg,

Long fescue roughs are beautiful, but they should allow for balls to be found.  In your neck of the woods, Moon Lake has always seemed to keep their long roughs in such a condition where finding the ball was easy and extracting it was unpredictable.  I have seen pictures of Wild Horse in NE where the fescue roughs were burned in order to control growth, and I'm sure others do the same.  Certainly, ensuring irrigation doesn't reach these areas is important for keeping long roughs playable.  Prairie Dunes is noted for its gunsch, and while it adds tremendous hues to the landscape, it does not seem to be ideally suited for playability.

TK

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

Hi Greg  -  where are you located?

[Greg Murphy]

Sean - located in the Canadian Plains above North Dakota - the course is Katepwa Beach Golf Club - www.golfkatepwa.com - rough is undisturbed native - nice sandy soils with lots of slope - bluegrass fairways - the gunch has really taken hold the last few years after wetter and cooler than normal summers - there is generally thicker growth everywhere but areas near fairways are especially bad with bluegrass invading (and some of that no doubt due to unintended irrigation).

Tyler - I haven't been to Moon Lake for quit a few years - I did play Links of North Dakota and Hawktree a month or so ago on the way to Nebraska and the rough at those courses seems to have transformed into gunch as well - over the years, I have played Links of North Dakota maybe a dozen times and remembered the rough being "playable" in the sense of being able to find a ball easily and advance it, but this year it is just jungle and so green almost indistinguishable from fairway when viewed from a distance, a real change from what I remember in previous plays when the fairways and rough were in obvious contrast. This year anything inches off the fairway there is lost unless stepped on.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Fescue at many of the courses in the Toronto area is inordinately thick this year as well due to a much wetter summer than usual.  But I believe that given a more typical summer the fescue should get back to its normal density.  In my experience, this is not at all unlike what you see in the UK where this year it is thin and wispy but in wet years it can be really gunchy.

[Greg Murphy]

Wayne - you are right about natural vegetation changes with climate patterns, and I think it is primarily to cause for the thickening we have seen - but of course it seems in North America players are not nearly so patient or accepting of those variations and soon cry for expansion of the maintained areas of the course - ironically, I think what I am hoping to find is a way to "maintain the unmaintained" at least short term during the current climate patterns, so it is not forever obliterated long term.

It has been some time since I played in the Toronto area, which would have a lot more moisture than here in the prairies, but I remember a round at Devil's Pulpit and the native rough seemed thin enough. Tyler mentioned Wild Horse, and when I played there a couple years ago, the rough was not exactly thin, but neither was it gunch, so I should follow up with them on their burning experiences.

[Adam Clayman]

Greg, I'm no super, but, I do live in the plains, and play at a place that does nothing to maintain their surrounds. This year is ridiculous. But last year was great, as we were in a drought.

IMO, there's no easy way to achieve playable conditions every year. Hand manicuring is just about the only good way to mitigate it, but, that's likely prohibitively expensive. As has been mentioned above, managing your over throw is key to those areas directly adjacent to fairway. Not watering when it's too windy, would help a lot, too. Burning is no good, as the new growth is even healthier.

My advice would be to pick the best spots to hand manicure. i.e. blind landing areas that get frequent errant shots.

Other than being diligent with the manicuring, maybe some pre emerge apps would help. The only other out of the box idea I can come up with is to encourage cart traffic in the native. I know I know, it's practically criminal to even suggest that, but, it's the only way I know how to disturb the over growth.

As I implied at the beginning, I haven't a clue how you pros would handle it.

[astavrides]

goats?

[RJ_Daley]

http://www.usga.org/turf/green_section_record/2009/may_jun/naturalized_areas.pdf

A few ideas in the above link.  As Adam says, the burning can generally thin it for a few weeks, depending on the spring growing conditions.  But, the blues and undergrowth come back stronger than the fescues and desirable natives.  Lawsonia has brought in farm green chopping or hay cutting equipment in the past, in fall, and cut it down a short as the equipment allows.  I don't know if they applied a broadleaf herbicide over that.  

I think Erin Hills did that in the two first years they were open.  Don't know what they do now...

Too bad they can't come up with a selective herbicide that is affordable that goes after blues and broadleaf and leaves the fescue to flourish.  But, still and chemical application to large areas of native won't be cheap.  I'm also not sure if anyone ever tried something like heavy lime or other topdressing of soils that are saturated with some growth retarding material that will leave some growth but kill a lot.  Probably not environmentally sound practice, however...  

I think the question is a conundrum for many superintendents, and I don't thing any of them have published an acceptable cultural or chemical  management practice that will work generally across the board.  I'd be interested if any supers looking in on this have a sound program they practice for their native area management.  

[Josh_Mahar]

A couple of you have already nailed the main point--When it rains its thick when it don't it isn't.  Don't matter if you are in Scotland or Nebraska.  That said native or naturalized roughs vary in species composition widely in different soils and geographical regions which can have a profound effect on how you might want to manage such "gunch".  
Even exclusively native prairie starts to change once you take grazing off it and encounter some overspray.  Controlling irrigation is key but can be difficult especially with larger sprinkler heads.  Here at Wild Horse we are getting better at keeping irrigation out of the rough but we still have areas to improve.

Fire is a great tool to manage native prairie and if done at the right time does NOT encourage bluegrasses and actually retards their development.  It will encourage warm season native grasses like bluestems and switchgrasses.  They can become pretty gunchy in wet years also but in general are thinner than thick bluegrass.

Periodic mowing of problem areas can help but bluegrass and fescue can thicken if mowed too often.  Growth regulators might be an option but many of those redirect a plants energy from growing longer to growing laterally ( i.e. thicker).  Grazing would be the ultimate option but logistics prevent that from being an option at most clubs.  
Again each rough is diffferent due to its species and climate variablity across the country so management would be different for each location.

[Bill_McBride]

Goats, sheep or cattle?

[Greg Murphy]

Thanks everybody for your input.

Josh - thanks so much - though I luckily was not often off the fairway when I played Wild Horse, I still recall on a hole on the front nine, near the clubhouse, probably the eighth, where I missed a shot right and was able to find it and pretty sure I got it on or near the green - the prospects were iffy but at least possible, as I think this type of hazard ought to be - mind if I have our super pick your brains a bit?

[Doug Siebert]

Is it "native" grass or native grass?  That is, is it really strains that were original to the area?  Maybe you're a bit too far west and north, but if you're in the "tallgrass" prairie area like I am in Iowa, there's nothing you can do about it.  A native tallgrass prairie is aptly named so if you don't manage it in some way, you might lose your bag if you bring it in, let alone your ball

My home course has some "native" that's just weedy bluegrass, that gets a bit too thick in wet years like this but allows a possibility of finding and playing the ball in a year with more normal rainfall.  It also has a few areas of reseeded native tallgrass prairie.  It is burned off each fall (leaving hundreds of black balls behind, since it is located in areas that attract the shanks and wild slices of 30 handicaps) but by this time of the year is already taller than my head.  On patch is at least an acre in size, all it needs a few buffalo and it would be like the clock was turned back 500 years.

[Sean_A]

Not to seem too obvious, but isn't increased fairway width the best way to manage soup if a club doesn't want to deal with it?  Animals do wonders as well, but there is an obvious tradeoff...

Ciao

[Greg Murphy]

Sean - the fairways are quite wide - generally 50-60 yards and often wider because of the angles at play - and it's never gutter ball where the solution would be to just widen the space between the gutters - the two places where the gunch most noticeably comes into play are on the second shots on par 5's where the fairways pinch on the left side at about 100-110 yards to about 40 yards of width, giving the choice of hitting over the gunch, beside it or before it. Widening the fairway at these spots would remove a lot of interest presented by the holes, in my view. However, I would much prefer if the penalty for taking on the hazard and failing we're not quite so severe.

[Sean_A]

Sean - the fairways are quite wide - generally 50-60 yards and often wider because of the angles at play - and it's never gutter ball where the solution would be to just widen the space between the gutters - the two places where the gunch most noticeably comes into play are on the second shots on par 5's where the fairways pinch on the left side at about 100-110 yards to about 40 yards of width, giving the choice of hitting over the gunch, beside it or before it. Widening the fairway at these spots would remove a lot of interest presented by the holes, in my view. However, I would much prefer if the penalty for taking on the hazard and failing we're not quite so severe.

Generally I would say 50-60 yard fairways is gracious so long as the terrain isn't terribly hilly or if the site is raked by wind.  Assuming that isn't the case, why the worry over the soup? 

Ciao

[Adam Clayman]

Josh, I saw today that you've taken a mower to some of the first 10' of Wooga. Had you done that before? What do you think of the results?

BTW, The course was in excellent shape and the greens were puurrrfect.

[Dan_Lucas]

We regularly take a mower to areas where we have overspray or drainage swales that get too thick. Especially in blind areas. Mowing them once a month or so as needed at 4-6" sets them back enough to find and get a club on the ball, but still tougher than the 1st cut of rough.

[RJ_Daley]

I remember shortly after the remodel job done by Forse-Nagle at Lawsonia, where the deep rough got very out of hand thick and towards late summer the came in and greenchopped it, baled it up, and probably provided it to some local dairy farmer for forage.  Can't put that lush stuff in the barn if wet, or it'll get hot and start a fire.  

What about you guys, Josh and Dan?  When you cut the thick rough down, did you rake it up and bale it or something?  Feel free to mow that lot of mine down anytime you feel like it Josh, and do whatever you'd like with the choppings...  

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