The Recovery of Huntingdon Valley GC

[TEPaul]

I've been encouraged to start a thread on Huntingdon Valley and what went down with it in the "perfect storm" type situation in the middle of the summer, but particularly on how the recovery went and what can be learned from both.

They are up and running again as of a few weeks ago and the course is remarkably good again with even their usual firm and fast (weather permitting which it sure isn't permitting right now) and remarkably fast greens this soon after a shut-down and recovery.

They want to talk about it and particularly if the humbling experience of the shutdown but also the recovery, and all the lessons learned from it all can help others out there learn and hopefully help prevent some things for others on down the road.

Scott Anderson, Jason Harrison, Kyle Harris and the crew and the club have a story to tell and they would like to tell it on here and elsewhere if it can help.

Ask away and I will do my very best to find and provide you with their answers on here. I would expect a few others on here can and will too.

In my opinion, this kind of thing is when and how GOLFCLUBATLAS.com gets good and truly relevent!

[Mac Plumart]

Okay...I'll start it off...what exactly happened?

[RJ_Daley]

Yes, it might be good to go back to the begining of the troubles, and then describe what was identified as the major issues.  I think there was a previous thread on GCA.com a few months ago, but I can't find it. I make the assumption that like many other places this year, in the crazy weather pattern, they got hit with high heat and unexpected heat in the night with great humidity, and were wiped out by disease.

If that is the case, did they have to slit seed and or did the turf that remained get somewhat dormant, then come back as its own native polystand of evolved grasses.  My understanding was that Scott maintained the turf as lean and mean as anyone in the country.  If so, was it just too fragile, or did the strong strains survive and return?

If he had to slit seed, what cultivar did he use to match what was left and survived the troubles?  If it took years of lean and mean to temper the turf stand as hearty and resislient to be able to go summer dormant, yet bounce back, does slit seeding new stuff, cause the process of tempering it to be lean and mean and hearty, start from scratch and take several seasons to get back to an evolved heartiness to maintain at lean and mean, firm and fast?

[TEPaul]

Mac and RJ:

To go back to the beginning they are identifying the initial problem that took the course down as "wet wilt" which is technically considered to be a "condition" and not a "disease." I suppose that does not mean various diseases may've happened after the fact but "wet wilit" was the initial problem that that caused the course to be closed for about 5-6 weeks

[Powell Arms]

Tom,

Did HVCC determine that the wet wilt was the sole culprit?  Was it a condition exacerbated by traffic?  I ask in light of the less frequently played C nine remaining open.  Did it not occur on C, or were the turf conditions different such that C withstood the stress?

[TEPaul]

Powell:

Those are of course all good questions. I may try to wait a bit to answer them to see if they see them and tell me in some real detail what THEY think the answers to these questions are or perhaps answer them on here themselves. I don't think Scott Anderson is registered on here and I don't know if Jason Harrison is either but I do certainly know Kyle Harris is.

My understanding is that "wet wilt" was what took out a lot of turf and as these things can do it happened shockingly quickly like within hours or over night. But it did happen around a day that really was like the Perfect Storm. It happened to be about as much rain as Scott ever saw get dumped on that course at one time. It took out bridges and just basically drowned the place. Don't forget, HVGC is definitely in a very distinct valley!

I think we also need to know from them what their mindset was before it actually happened. My recollection is it was not exactly like any other day back then in July when the conditions were obviously beginning to conspire to create some real potential agronomic problems.

I don't even know how many on here really appreciate that in the industry and pretty much across North America this really was the all time summer from HELL! You ask pretty much any super anywhere and they will invariably tell you that.

But you know how it goes-----eg these things never seem the same before they happened compared to looking at them in retrospect. We always need to keep that first and foremost in mind when analyzing these things. If 911 should teach us only one thing, in my opinion, that would be it!!

My understanding is that they knew something bad might be in the wings just because of the ongoing weather pattern and I think they were hashing out what to do about it before it happened maybe like a bunch of doctors would over a problem in the emergency room.

I get the feeling from what I've heard from Scott and maybe Kyle too that Jason Harrison proposed a scenario and a way to deal with it and in retrospect his calls may've been the best. Or maybe the recovery itself had a lot to do with some of the things Jason did or proposed. Scott is very impressed with him at this point----that I do know.

Jason to me is one of these young agressive go-go guys who is really energetic, smart and confident. He reminds me a lot of Matt Burrows of Winged Foot and Cliff Moore of Mountain Ridge that way.

Anyway, I expect some good and detailed answers to any questions on here so hang in there.

[Dan Herrmann]

3.5 inches of rain followed by a few days of 100F + temps are known to cause problems.  I don't care who you are - you're going to have problems keeping grass healthy in those conditions.

HV has some great stuff going on, and the fact that they've recovered SO quickly is yet another testament to their skill and dedication to doing things their way.

By the way, the amount of rain during that storm was extraordinarily variable across the region.  That same storm brought my course abut 15 miles west less than 0.2" of rain.

[tomgoutman]

Was it not caused by course maintenance issues--that's what I heard (triple hearsay and likely unreliable)?

[Doug Braunsdorf]

I would be interested in hearing about how the issues were communicated with the membership and the different departments around the club.  Coming from my "past life" in Club Management (clubhouse side), I was always interested in trying to get the different departments communicating and working in tandem, like a well-oiled machine, rather than at odds, as they are in many places.  

In any equity club, there will be 200+ different opinions on matters.  That's normal.  What most interests me is how the Greens staff was able, with their Board/Member Chair, to communicate the story to the membership, keep a membership informed, and work through the situation to a resolution.  I understand that Scott had a lot of support during this time, which is good.  HVCC is my favorite course in the district.  This is good to see, the course recovering. 

[Adam Clayman]

Tom, Wet Wilt is not caused by maintenance issues. It is when the roots of the plant are drowning and recede to the surface.

Is the C nine on higher ground? If so that could explain why it was able to remain open?

Tepaul. What was it that Jason suggested?

I know that the course in Chicago, which had me initially speculating on what the problem was. could only think of lowering the ponds, to remedy the situation. But in a situation like this, there's likely nowhere for the water to go, so it may be futile. That course also suffered mightily after their wet wilt. They were hit with every disease known to man.

[Steve Lang]

   How many holes  or areas were involved? Upland or downland from the pond?

[Steve Lang]

 Does the course get a lot of "run-on" from surrounding neighborhoods?

[TEPaul]

Thanks all for the questions. There're all good and pertinent, in my opinion.

Obviously this thread will be quite different from the norm on here as they are going to have to read them and answer them and either give specific answers to me or others registered on here to put on here or perhaps someone like Kyle who works there will put them on here.

This is what they want to do but I can see this may take more time than most threads.

Sorry about that. Stay patient.

Thanks

[Steve_ Shaffer]

I played HV about 10 days ago. There was an overnight rain. It seemed to me that it wasn't as F&F as before the closure. The greens were slower. Some fairways hadn't fully recovered but otherwise were in good condition.

My question is: Is there an increased watering program planned for the future? Will F&F return?

[TEPaul]

"My question is: Is there an increased watering program planned for the future? Will F&F return?"


Steverino:

I think I can handle that one on my own and if I get it wrong I will correct it.

Firm and fast will return at HVGC even though amazingly there was an effort afoot by some members, perhaps due to the problems this summer and perhaps not, to get away from the F&F program HVGC developed so long ago and has maintained all these years.

I am told those members have been dealt with however; I can't say if they were all taken to the proverbial woodshed and whipped or whether they were simply convinced otherwise in some more civil manner.

But I am told Firm and Fast will return to HVGC. Essentially that is their ethos with maintenance and playability!

By the way, when we were over there on Wednesday, I would say the greenspeed was around 10-10.5 on C even though a suggestion was made to slow the C nine greens down from their regular mow height simply to experiment with preserving various pin positions on some greens (viz #5 and #8) in preference to some other solutions.

The latter issue is sort of a separate one, at least to me, and can generally be reflected and considered somehow with an answer to the question-----At what "differential" (difference between the low and high greenspeed) can a superintendent comfortably maintain greens and greenspeeds with regularity?

[Todd Bell]

How does F&F correlate with "wet wilt"?

[Adam Clayman]

Todd, I don't understand your question?

According to my understanding, Scott has some of the deepest roots in golf, because of his practices. That's a good thing.

Saturated ground, to the point where the water has nowhere to go, will not yield F&F, anywhere.

[Kyle Harris]

I'm forging a better response but I can explain wet wilt in a simple analogy.

Plants release water to cool themselves off. Consider this like human perspiration.

Now, put the human in a pool.
Now, slowly raise the temperature of the pool water.
Can the body sweat to cool itself?

No...

Similar principle. The plant is no longer able to cool itself through transpiration. What happened was a killer rain even on the weekend of July 10-11 which caused immediately saturated ground coupled with very high temperatures.

Now to parse through the more than 600 photos and my notes from this summer. Keep the questions coming and please keep the speculation to a minimum if you guys don't mind.

The damage was widespread, both up and downland from the pond.

[Bradley Anderson]

I'm forging a better response but I can explain wet wilt in a simple analogy.

Plants release water to cool themselves off. Consider this like human perspiration.

Now, put the human in a pool.
Now, slowly raise the temperature of the pool water.
Can the body sweat to cool itself?

No...

Similar principle. The plant is no longer able to cool itself through transpiration. What happened was a killer rain even on the weekend of July 10-11 which caused immediately saturated ground coupled with very high temperatures.

Now to parse through the more than 600 photos and my notes from this summer. Keep the questions coming and please keep the speculation to a minimum if you guys don't mind.

The damage was widespread, both up and downland from the pond.

Thats a great analogy Kyle. I have only seen wet wilt once in my career, and there isn't anything you can do to stop it from kiling turf when the heat is high. Let me ask you, did you come through this with a higher percentage of bentgrass than before?

[Mike_Trenham]

Given the diagnosis of wetwilt as the root cause (no pun intended) is HVCC thinking about installing any of these modern drainage systems in their greens?

Also was the wet wilt just on a few greens and the resultant diseases then transfered to the other greens on the golfers spikes allowing the C nine to not be effected?

What will be the water useage at HVCC this year vs. prior years.  I bet it was less than most other local clubs even during the recovery period.

[TEPaul]

I'd like to see this thread divided into four sub-sections or subjects:

1. What exactly happened the day the course got clobbered by that "perfect storm" combination of real high heat and humidity and that massive rain event?

2. Was there any way, in retrospect of course, of preventing what happened that day----eg "wet wilt?"

3. What went into the decision to close down?

4. What were the particulars and details that went into the recovery from that close down day on until the reopening app. 5-6 weeks later?

5. What did Scott Anderson and the HVGC Maintenance Dept learn from all this?

[TEPaul]

I would also like to say to everyone reading this thread that of course I know Scott Anderson and his crew and have talked to them some about all this throughout (even though agronomy is surely not something I feel comfortable with or understand, and actually it has always scared the shit outta me!).

But from Day One and throughout all this I've been very impressed with him as a super and as a person as he definitely never tried to conger up and offer any excuses about this. He admits it was a shock to him and his ego. AND THAT, I think, is a good place to start and something good to know with something like this, because even if noone asks I suspect many would like to know if Scott feels he made some mistakes somehow and if so if he's willing to talk about that?

Not to put words or answers in his mouth but he did tell me just after this happened that he felt from years of experience with his particular kind of turf and playability (F&F) at HVGC that it just may be some of the toughest grass in the world. I believe he said he felt like it could just handle anything-----even a "Perfect Storm" event. After-all it has handled everything that came down the weather pipeline for close to thirty years now.

In this vein, I would like to offer something of a contour-point remark from Merion's inimitable Matt Shaeffer. One time a few years ago we were sitting in a cart behind Merion East's #17 green watching groups of players coming through trying to deal with some very F&F playablity. We'd been sitting there quietly watching and all of a sudden Matt offered this: "You know I really hate grass!"  

When I asked him how he could say something like being so long in that business as he has been.

He said; "Because it is always conspiring against me and what I want to do with it and the playability of this great golf course."

[Adam Clayman]

Its interesting how different people look at the same info. I never tyhought about the greens as being affected. My thought was about the turf. Meaning fairways and rough. Maybe because most greens drain better. Looking forward to Kyle's report.

[TEPaul]

Adam:

Some golfers and of course the Rules of Golf make a distinction between rough and fairway ("Through the Green") and greens. But I have never met or talked to any grass that actually knew there was a distinction like that. To the larger world-wise community known as "The Grass" it's just a style kind of thing----they know some of them are regularly given crew cuts or buzz cuts and some of them aren't.

And "The Grass" also knows these styles tend to change from time to time such as this new wrinkle and style of the US Open "progressive rough cut" of USGA Competitions and Rules Director, Mike Davis. To "The Grass" that's basically a sort of three level or layer Mohawk haircut!

Actually when I was walking down the side of the 18th hole at Pebble during the US Open and looking at that "progressive rough cut" of Davis' some of "The Grass" at the outside much longer level and layer asked me if I would ask Mike Davis if he would consider painting them pink like a real Punk Mohawk haircut.

[mike_malone]

  I don't think they should air their dirty laundry here.