Ryan, et. al.,
Rather than chemical additives, wouldn't the grass be better off if it was weaned from its dependence on excessive volumes of water ?
Volumes required to keep it green ?
Mr. Mucci,
The products that I mentioned again are just a tool to cope with heat stress mainly, and drought stress to a lesser extent. In effect, if the canopy temperature of the turf can be reduced 5-10° F that means the plant can be more efficient at the physiological processes sustaining its life, and thus consume less water than a plant under more stress. Again, this is not a silver bullet and the cost of these products make it such that most facilities could not use it on all playing surfaces on a regular basis. It is however, a nice tool to have at one's disposal when things start heating up as they have here in the Midwest over the last two or three weeks.
As for weaning the turf off it's dependence on water, it's not as simple as lowering the run times on the sprinklers each night. Until you get clubs and all of the appropriate stakeholders (ownership, BOD, greens chairman, superintendent, golf professional, GM, etc.) to buy in, brown, yellow, purple, green isn't going to happen. Unfortunately, for a lot of superintendents the season is long and lacks a truly objective manner in which to judge the condition of the golf course, unless of course you've lost grass. Couple that lack of good job performance metrics with static or lowered maintenance budgets, inefficient irrigation systems, and a disconnect between the stakeholders as to what the true goal of the maintenance operation is and you have arrived your destination of a wet, green golf course. It might not be pretty to you and hell, it might not even be pretty to the person charged with its care but, it's accepted and people still come out to play golf.
Now for me as a superintendent, I am very fortunate to have a good group of people to work for that understand what is involved and WANT firm and fast conditions. It doesn't come without its headaches of some people that want an emerald green golf course from property line to property line, or dealing with traffic of 100 plus rounds where turf is already on the edge, or working our butts off right up until the next rain event that wipes the slate clean and we start the dry down process again. Making firm and fast a reality here is made easier by the fact that our club is less than ten years old and thus we are growing 99% bentgrass on all of the main playing surfaces and we have great resources in terms of labor (hand watering) and the irrigation system. That is to say that not all clubs are on equal footing when it comes to commencing a program to produce firm fast conditions (i.e. poor soil, inadequate aerification in previous years, higher percentages of annual bluegrass, etc.).
The bottom line is it is up to each club or course's leadership to determine what's right for them in terms of how firm and fast they want to see their place. Once the decision is made it is then up to the superintendent to develop, sell, and implement a plan based on the resources available to provide those conditions. In a lot of cases, and as counter-intuitive as it may sound, it may require more resources to go this route.