Ballyneal gets bent

[Bill_McBride]

Chris,

it is not as straight forward as you seem to think. Bent can out perform fescue and fescue can outperform bent it depends on what strains, maintenance used and climate. Fescue and brown top bent will co-inhabit a sward quite happily. The impression I get however is that the biggest problem is a lack of knowledge on how to maintain fescue greens.

Jon

Jon,

I was reacting to Tom Doak's comments on the previous thread about bent and fescue...

...the bentgrass population became seen as a "weed", and there was little you could do to get the fescue to out-compete it.  So, eventually, you have to let the bent take over...

I didn't really have an opinion on grasses "competing" prior to that, but after reading what Tom wrote and reflecting on my own weed problems in my lawn - it makes a lot of sense...

Chris.

Looking at my lawn, it would be REALLY difficult to putt on dollar weed!

[JESII]

I expect a seamless transition, great playability and no surface disruption.
Doubt anyone will even be talking about this by this time next year.  

Don,

How would there be no surface disruption if the 35% number is accurate?

Don't disagree about your second point though...

[Chris Johnston]

As I understand it (and it was discussed and explained at length here by some smart guys), bent and fescue are probably not comfortably compatible as they compete, similar to poa and bent.  Each has different water needs, disease susceptibility, and needs and behavior are different in very hot conditions versus cooler climates.  Fescue is optimal in cooler climates: see Scotland, Ireland, Bandon, etc.  If you have fescue (or mostly fescue) greens out here, you will have to suffer slower speeds as the greens stress.  One rap on bent greens is it isn't compatible with firm and fast - not true at all.

Fescue takes dogged committment - keep it lean and plan to overseed. You also have to accept playablity over look as fescue will be green, yellow, and even brown.  There is a ton of myth but very few pure fescue courses out there.  You also must pay attention to thatch.  You also have to place budget focus where you need it, and many courses have suffered through these times with leaner than should be budgets.

The bentgrass from greens can indeed encroach into fairways - we remove it and re-sod as it really impacts run ups.  Bentgrass also "knits" and fescue does not so divots take real work.  On fairways, bentgrass is more "sticky" but it provides a nice lie.  Fescue isn't sticky at all, with tight lies, plus firm and fast is easily maintained.  The two together are probably not an optimal match as water needs differ.  In heat, fescue wants to go dormant - ok for fairways but not so much greens. When this happens, you have to let the fescue grow (raise mowing heights) and that impacts (slows) green speeds.  If you don't mind wild variations in green speeds, have at it. Most people do.

Poa encroachment is widespread and can be remediated if the total remains below, say, 15%.  Above that and you get "Frankengreens" and "frankenfairways".  Whatever you choose, you want it to be as close to 100% as you can to maintain consistency.  Great courses have been changed over time with bent, poa, and blue encroachment into what used to be firm and fast - I believe Sand Hills is currently seeing and addressing this issue.

There are also a bunch of fescue strains and a dozens of bentgrass strains so the details and blends are more complicated than most realize.  That's why you need a grass guy that knows what he is living with.

Bentgrass greens don't necissarily have to be fast.  You can indeed control speed by mowing height and rolling or not rolling.  That said, if you don't want faster, why go to bent?

[Tom_Doak]

Chris:

The main difference between fescue and bent for me is different TEXTURE.  The leaf blade for bentgrasses is much fatter than the needle-like leaf of fine fescue.  Fatter leaf blade = more friction at the same height of cut.

Optimal mowing height for bentgrass greens now is .125 inches, and I've heard even lower numbers.  Fine fescue mowed at .225 inches -- just under 1/4 inch -- can produce almost the same speed.  The problem is when you put them together ... bentgrass at .225 slows the green down and starts to cause anomalies in the roll of the ball, while fescue won't survive at .125.

The greens at Old Macdonald are 100% fine fescue and they are a delight to putt on.  I was talking to Ken Nice a couple of weeks ago and he thinks he's got a fighting chance to keep the bent and poa out indefinitely.

The main reason I prefer fescue to bent (all else being equal) is that the surrounds are SO much better in fescue.  I'm not worried about the bent on the greens at Ballyneal at all ... I'm worried that it will start to creep out into the surrounds and mess with the short game meld that has always been the highlight of the course.  Those greens surrounds are part of the strategy of play more than any course I can think of, and that's a big reason why Ballyneal is so much fun.

[JESII]

Tom,

How do you think this change will impact the architecture of the course over the next couple of decades?

As Chris asked..."if you don't want faster, why go to bent?"

[Ross Harmon]

I was starting to wonder HOW this thread hadn't been started yet! Thanks Jim for opening it up for us.

I was out at BN two weeks ago and only saw great things happening with the greens. With Dave + Tom + Team at the helm, we all know this will work out great. Agree with Tom that the surrounds are the most critical part though.

Will be back out there soon, will report back with an update. 

[RJ_Daley]

Isn't it just a plain fact that the two courses that have been around two decades out there that started with fescue, had to compromise with the idea that fescue would eventually loose out?  Sand Hills GC and Wild Horse fought the good fight, but it just isn't possible over time to keep the sward predominantly fescue, particularly on thin budgets.  There are just too many days over 90, and too many nights with high enough relative humidity, as it has been explained to me, or at least as I understand it.  And, TD's comment that it is critical in the surrounds of those prairie links courses to maintain the playing maintenance meld ideal, can't be done over more that a half decade or so, without major expense and interruption of significant cultivation activities to re-establish fescue dominance in the surrounds.  In the mean time, with short season in the Sand Hills, and long periods of transition cultivation techniques and practices, there is lots of time that golfers are 'enduring' the less than ideal intentions of what performance the fescue maintained firm and fast is supposed to offer as the reward.  

I think that Jon Wigget was saying that one cultivar of creeping bent, Colonial, is better to be the mate of the dominant fescues of chewings and slender creeping red fescue in the sward, because Colonial is also a bunch and weak rhizomatious grower but, other aggressive bents are strong stoloniferous and they will naturally send aggressive stolons into and among the weaker roots structure of the fescues.  Then, with the need to de-thatch, the fescue roots get highly disturbed or pulled up and a pathway of disease and opening for the agressive stolons of the bent gets wider, and you loose your fescue.  It all gets puffy, needs more or different water and nutrients and thus, you get the spotty and inconsistent putting and surrounds textures that are not acceptable to the seeker of the firm and fast, run-ups and bounces from the fringes, etc.  

Wild Horse was awesome while it lasted.  But, reality of budgets and member expectations, along with climate just isn't a symbiotic relationship....  

[Jon Wiggett]

RJ,

you have read my posts correctly. Too many people here are using names for the grasses such as 'bent' when this encompasses many different strains which require different maintenance programmes. People should be more specific as otherwise it can be very confusing.

To start with what many people mean when they say bent grass are grasses such as the Penn series A2, A4 etc or L93 to name just a few. These are usually incorrectly called 'Agrostis stoloniferi when infact they are Agrostis palustris. These are very aggressive growing grasses and require a totally different maintenance regime to that of Fescue (Festuca rubra ....used in most green mixes. I suspect what you call colonial and I call brown top are the same i.e. Agrostis tenius. This is compatable with the maintenance regime of Fescue and makes up the mix on most of the links courses here in the UK that I have seen together with Fescue and Poa annua.

Heat is really not a problem for fescue as long as the rootzone is deep enough which I would suggest is at least 30". I am not sure about high humidity but suspect that Fescue will not survive well in such conditions.

Fescue is probably the cheapest to maintain as it requires very little nutrient input, lower water than most including all the bents as far as I am aware and less cutting. Regular topdressing and weekly slitting or spiking (micro tines) do make a big difference.

What fescue does not offer is good definition or greenness which is why I suspect it struggle to survive at many clubs. Most people I talk to judge the quality of the course purely on a visual basis and do not consider the quality of the playing surface to play on.

Chris H,

I was not having a go at you. Sorry if my post came across as such. Getting weedy grass out is difficult. Probably the best way to get your lawn looking better would be to get a good quality mower which is kept well maintained and then cut the lawn daily during the growing season. But then again who is really going to do that except the fanatic down the road with the great garden but no life

Chris J,

I agree with most of your post except fescue has no heat issues and is cheap to maintain. During high heat periods fescue slows down leaf growth and increases deep root growth but does not go dormant. On the speed side I have had fescue greens cut at 6.5mm stimping at over 10 feet. What do you mean with wild variations in green speeds?

A big mistake many make in my opinion is trying to get pure swards and different playing characteristics for the various parts of the course. Diversity in the sward make up give better protection against disease and a more consistent all playing season quality. I want my course to play the same from tee to green.

Jon

[Tom_Doak]

Jon:

I would love to get you over to the States one of these days and have you get around to see our various attempts at growing fescue.  There really are only a handful of people in the United States who have any appreciation of or understanding of it, and of course, none of them are participating in this thread!

The problem is that there are so many guys who are convinced it won't work [for whatever reason] and, as with stock market analysts, just make up reasons why things are happening with no understanding of what's really happening with the grass.  Chris is an easy target here, but really all of the course owners I've dealt with are in the same boat; they aren't agronomists and there are plenty of people ready to question why they wouldn't choose "the best grass", which in the states is widely assumed to be creeping bentgrass because that's the direction the turfgrass and chemical industries want you to go.

The most telling comment on the thread is Chris' comment "you have to accept playability over look" to want fescue.  I wanted to say "only in America" would anyone have a hard time with that concept, but it's no longer true; I've yet to meet anyone in Asia who appreciates a good playing surface.

[Keith OHalloran]

Is it fair to say that given an owner that is committed to it, a pure fescue to start with, and diligent practices, that fescue greens are practical in hot environments like the sand hills?

[Don_Mahaffey]

I expect a seamless transition, great playability and no surface disruption.
Doubt anyone will even be talking about this by this time next year.  

Don,

How would there be no surface disruption if the 35% number is accurate?

Don't disagree about your second point though...

I'm wagering that Dave will slit seed in to increase the bent population and change his maintenance regime from a fescue based approach to a bent. I'd be surprised to see much more then a quick transition to bent. Of course this is all pure speculation on my part, but I've seen Dave's work and I'm wagering this change is painless. I'm also betting Dave knows the playability of that course as well as anyone and he'll get it right. And to be 100% honest, I love fescue as much as anyone, but I think this particular change on the greens isn't that big of a deal. The rest of the course will still be what it is.

Tom,
I think there are plenty of people in the US who have an appreciation of fescue. They may not know much about the grass, but the amount of returning play at Bandon tells me there are plenty of golfers who love the surface.
I have never managed a course with fescue, so maybe that disqualifies me (but then there are a lot of experts here who have never actually had to care for a course day in and day out for years) but I've tried to learn all I can and what I've come away with is fescue is the ideal grass for a lower budget course. That flies in the face of some comments here, but it requires little fertilization, almost no fungicide, less mowing then other turf grasses, and very little cultivation (when compared to other grasses) if you just remember the part about fertilizer. One big problem with Fescue is the proper management is counter to what we are taught here in the US about maintaining golf turf. Seems to me that if you want to maintain good fescue in the US, you have to be ignore just about all the "education" that is offered about turfgrass management. Maintain fescue like blue, bent, rye, or Bermuda and you'll be in trouble.

RJ,
I thought WH was planted with low mow and just had fescue approaches? I played there as often as I could in my travels back and forth and even though those approaches are no longer pure, they still work.  

[Chris Johnston]

Jon,

We would love to have you out to see our fescue program!  As a non agronomomist, I was sharing what I heard during our process and agree with you and pointed out that the terms bent and fescue include dozens (or more) strains.

I'm not sure it matters or not but we are in at mid high altitude, arid, on sand, with sustained temp cycles ranging from the 60's to 100's.  All fairways are fescue (both courses) with a1/a4 greens on the Nicklaus and dominant on the Tom's course.  Fescue has a reputation (perceived or in practice) as having to be slow when hot where speeds can be maintained with bent.  I'm not saying its factual, but perception can quickly become reality.

As RJ points out, all of the courses out here have "amended" their fescue programs, introducing other grasses which changed playability.  I have no idea why, other than fescue is perceived (again) as being tougher to manage.  There are some great fescue up at Bandon and at Kingsley, both cooler places.  May be an excuse but our "crutch" is, then, heat.  

It is certainly true that most here in the U.S. are pretty hardened by "look over playability".  On Tom's course, we did want to achieve complimentary green speeds 10+ at both our courses (hence bent greens on both).  We are 100% fescue on fairways and are fully committed to the program, even if we are learning along the way.  We also agree that fecue is cost effective, but many probably create some of our own problems with overwatering and fertility.

I think Tom is right - there aren't many people on the ground over here who really understand fescue.  Thus, it is perceived as being scary when knowledge and experience would help.  Add to that vendors pushing the latest fad and, I'm afraid, fescue is always sold as inferior.  That's a shame.

For us, fescue provides optimal playing surfaces, in a world where many who play don't understand (or even like) the playablilty "gift" they receive.  And I agree with you 100% as we are learning that fescue is very "low need" and thus, cost effective.  Tom's course is only 1 year from planting, and the playability is spectacular even as a pup.  Can't wait to see it in a year or two as we touch up areas.  I do wonder how long it takes to have really good fescue greens, as the dominant bent greens are very good one year in.

To end, this kind of discussion really does guys like us a service, and I'm thrilled we are engaged in it.  While opinions on various topics are the norm, shared knowledge is a real gift here at GCA.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

In my total ignorance can somebody tell me what type of grasses on the heathland courses around London..are they fescues?

[Tom_Doak]

I'm wagering that Dave will slit seed in to increase the bent population and change his maintenance regime from a fescue based approach to a bent. I'd be surprised to see much more then a quick transition to bent. Of course this is all pure speculation on my part, but I've seen Dave's work and I'm wagering this change is painless. I'm also betting Dave knows the playability of that course as well as anyone and he'll get it right. And to be 100% honest, I love fescue as much as anyone, but I think this particular change on the greens isn't that big of a deal. The rest of the course will still be what it is.

Tom,
I think there are plenty of people in the US who have an appreciation of fescue. They may not know much about the grass, but the amount of returning play at Bandon tells me there are plenty of golfers who love the surface.
I have never managed a course with fescue, so maybe that disqualifies me (but then there are a lot of experts here who have never actually had to care for a course day in and day out for years) but I've tried to learn all I can and what I've come away with is fescue is the ideal grass for a lower budget course. That flies in the face of some comments here, but it requires little fertilization, almost no fungicide, less mowing then other turf grasses, and very little cultivation (when compared to other grasses) if you just remember the part about fertilizer. One big problem with Fescue is the proper management is counter to what we are taught here in the US about maintaining golf turf. Seems to me that if you want to maintain good fescue in the US, you have to be ignore just about all the "education" that is offered about turfgrass management. Maintain fescue like blue, bent, rye, or Bermuda and you'll be in trouble.

Don:

As usual, I agree with everything you've said here.

The principal problem with fescue management is that so few guys are willing to go back to square one and learn how to maintain it.  I've been blessed to work with some guys who have set the bar very high.  The problem is, the superintendent is not on my payroll, and when someday they have moved on to greener pastures , God knows whether the next guy will be as willing to learn about something new.

Ironically, the most ideal client I ever had for fescue fairways was High Pointe -- they never intended to spend very much on maintaining the course and would have been the perfect guys to just let it do its thing.  Unfortunately, they also had rabbit ears about complaints from golfers who didn't know a damned thing, and no continuity of management.  One thing I'm sure of, fescue won't survive seven superintendents in twenty years!

[Tom_Doak]

In my total ignorance can somebody tell me what type of grasses on the heathland courses around London..are they fescues?

Michael:

In my last trip to the London area I saw a couple of courses with predominantly bentgrass fairways, which was a new thing to me for the UK.  Most of the older courses are fescue and Colonial bentgrass in a mixture, and they try to manage them on the lean side to promote the fescue.

[Sean_A]

Many heathland greens have a serious percentage of poa and bent, thus I believe the false reputation for being exceptionally well draining courses.  Of course, drainage is all relative, but I don't think its a coincidence that what most heathland courses are is a hybrid mix of grasses.  Clubs are finding out now, at their cost, how hard it is bring predominately fescue grasses back.  

I was always surprised at Ballyneal's fescue attempt only because it gets blazing saddles in Colorado and I think the course is in a fairly arid area.  The club did have it right with the relatively low number of rounds and limited carts so from a laymans' PoV I guess there was a chance it would work.  For those that know, how did the greens compare to the typical links in GB&I?  I never heard GCAers really complain so I always figured the greens weren't really an issue and that perhaps a lack of speed was made up for by firmness (which is really what GB&I links pretty much shoot for).  Was it the members who insisted on a change?

Ciao  

[Tim Pitner]

I loved the fescue greens at Ballyneal so I can't help but feel this is a bit of a shame.  But, perhaps it couldn't be helped. 

[RJ_Daley]

Don, Wild Horse was always low mow, dwarf K-Blue.  They had a line drawn about 30-40 yards from every green on approaches and sand cart paths to widlely divert all cart traffic around those greens surrounds.  As you know, the boys constructed WH with extra wide surrounds of fescue composition (generally and on average wider surrounds than even Sand Hills GC).  Those surrounds are the reason I always loved WH so much.  When it was at its optimum best in the first 6-8 years, it was a blast to play that different sort of game where you adjusted your approaches to bound into green surfaces that have excellent slopes and nobs and arrayed bunkers to make the ground approaches relevant, and where you had a graduate continuing education program to always pick up on a new nuance of how the ball was going to react on those approaches and side and back surrounds.  And of course the misses left many more options a learned touch of putting, bumping and chipping to pin placements.  

But, I believe Josh just couldn't get the local shareholders to 'get it' when it came to the need for maintaining the fescue 'differently' and the ideal of it being firm.  It is the local customer that drives it.  While WH reputation in our quarters spread wide and legendary, the locals just didn't get it - or apparently 'want it'.  I think Josh knows full well how to maintain the fescue if he needed to, and had the time and $taff to fight the higher disease from nightly humidity and encroachment of bent into the sward.  But, the local people who play there had spoken, so.......  

[Patrick Glynn]

This is an interesting one - I played Ballyneal a few years back and actually thought the greens were fine. Relatively quick (probably 9.5) and true & firm which made them a perfect compliment to how the course was designed.

I had heard that in recent years that the green surfaces had deteriorated to such an extent that it impacted one's enjoyment of the round.

A word of warning though - Ballyneal Slopes + Sand Hills Speed = Disaster. I have played SH a few times where I though the greens were a little too extreme (e.g. running at 12.5 at the end of season in a stiff breeze). Add in the more dramatic slopes at Ballyneal and we could have a problem... Here's hoping that the greens will still run at around a 10.

Patrick

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Patrick,
I agree with you Sand Hills speed with those marvelous slopes of Ballyneal and the course becomes unplayable or at best farsical for scoring purposes.

I love Ballynael and as ststed many times as much fun as you can have on a golf course, but as a scoring experience it can be torturous with the green slopes, and if combined with increased speeds...wow

Sean,
The greens play very much like links greens prepared for the club Open day.
Similar to Birkdale speed for the Goblet or Formby's for the Hare.
The undulations are more severe than most links courses, but that is not meant as a critisism just a note.

[Ben Sims]

.

[Ben Sims]

Talking Ballyneal and agronomy, two of my favorite topics.  

I think what will be missed is the seamless transition from fairway to surrounds to green that is the hallmark of the golf course.  I've yet to return to Dismal Red to see how the fescue fairway to bent green transition works, though I'm sure Jagger and team are pretty astute with it by now.

What I think strikes most people when they play at Bandon, Kingsley, Ballyneal or Chambers for the first time, is that from the tee box to the green, the surface never changes.  I wish I knew how to bottle that formula--seamless and nonexistent transitions--and make it my life's work.  There are dozens of techniques that seem to promote that ideal (graduated mowing, topdressing green surrounds are just two of the more rudimentary ones), but nothing can replicate the mono-sward (same cultivar mix tee to green).  Don has done a wonderful job creating this ideal on Bermuda, and along with the guys at Streamsong, are likely the only sup's in the country trying to do it on Bermuda.  

I guess what I am trying to say is that, sure, Dave Hensley will do a fantastic job and I suspect that the final word on this change will be good. But there's something about not knowing where the fairway ends and the greens starts.  The courses that use this maintenance meld are among my favorite.  Changing the cultivar on the greens at Ballyneal can only further define the edge.  I think the gold standard in golf courses, whether in constructing one or maintaining one, is to minimize definition of "the edge."

[John Kirk]

I could only speculate on the percentage of bluegrass, bentgrass and fescues (plus a little poa annua) in the course mix, but they are all present in significant quantities.  As of two weeks ago, the greens have a mottled appearance, indicative of multiple types of grasses.

The course was playing fine, but the course was very wet.  This was during the period when Colorado had the flooding rains.  So the surrounds were very slow.  Overall, I think 2013 was the wettest summer in Ballyneal history.

When it's dry, it plays fine, maybe not as fast as a few years ago, when water usage plus rainfall was kept at an absolute minimum.  As Don M. notes, fescue thrives in a dry environment.  Excepting the greens, I believe the plan is to encourage the fescue everywhere else.  But it never looked like Old Macdonald does, with its 100% fescue surface.

Originally, I believe the intent at Ballyneal was to have dwarf bluegrass and Colonial bent quickly form a dense understory of grass, in order to discourage poa annua establishment.  I'm going to pull the old thread "Ballyneal Agronomy" by Dave Wilber, to the top of the stack, to see if there are clues.

Some of us may not know what we're talking about, but it's a favorite subject.  The "Ballyneal Agronomy" thread was a big deal for me, the one that compelled me to contact Rupert O'Neal and go have a look at his project.

[David Kelly]

A word of warning though - Ballyneal Slopes + Sand Hills Speed = Disaster. I have played SH a few times where I though the greens were a little too extreme (e.g. running at 12.5 at the end of season in a stiff breeze). Add in the more dramatic slopes at Ballyneal and we could have a problem... Here's hoping that the greens will still run at around a 10.

That's the first thing I thought of when I heard a few weeks ago that BN was going to bent greens.  I've always preferred BN a little bit to SH because of the the seamless way their fairways and green surrounds transitioned into the greens, the dramatic green slopes and the way it could handle the wind better than SH.

[Jerry Kluger]

I had played SH a few years ago and noticed that Poa had begun infesting a few of the greens and I was with a greens superintendent from the northeast and he told me that it was still possible for them to get rid of the Poa but they needed to do it soon.  This year it appears that they didn't try to get rid of it and accepted it as a fact of life. 

The story I always hear from people is that it comes in on the shoes of players from course with Poa and the only way to stop it is to dip the shoes of all players before they play.  I have seen quite a few courses with bent grass greens that were able to keep out Poa without any of this dipping stuff. But I don't know what is true and what is not.