Working too hard at re-invention

[Joe Hancock]

Sorry about another thread that includes what we're watching at Pinehurst, but it's interesting in many ways.

I can't help but think that we, as an industry and a sport, keep trying to reinvent what used to work just fine in days gone by. I like Pinehurst as it's set up as a Championship venue, but it's anything but sustainable or affordable to maintain. It's already been covered, but those naturalized areas at Pinehurst will require a lot of human intervention.

What was wrong with having a golf course with adequate centerline irrigation, as well as adequate irrigation at greens and tees(like Pinhurst now has), but have rough that is turf that gets mowed when the season and rainfall dictates, then gets left in a natural state when those elements also dictate? Why do we need such an elaborate plant scheme to define where a golfer would want to be or not want to be?

I doubt the golf industry will ever have a more sustainable model than that of the simple(for lack of a better term) muni maintenance level. I played the Mines yesterday(it had been a couple years since I had played there!), and, while not a single row irrigation system, has a much simpler, and perfectly adequate, maintenance regime. Bunkers where perfectly presented, greens were just fine, and everything seemed simple.

Will we end up doing what we used to, only to pat ourselves on the back with how clever we've become?

Joe

[Grant Saunders]

Joe, I totally agree.

Using Pinehurst after such a radical transformation is akin to showing morbidly obese people pictures of runway models and telling them this is the shape they need to be in.

Sustainability is great and Im all for it and if it results in a certain look than Im fine with that. There is also other ways to head down the same path but in a manner that produces a different look but is equally sustainable.

[Steve Lang]

  Joe,

Hard to beat those threes in the trees at The Mines, and I remember those greens were quite entertaining, with getting there just half the fun; plenty to think about getting from tee to green and in the hole.  So the grass is doing ok with that gypsum mine water? 

[Jim_Kennedy]

What is sustainable has a whole new meaning when you're charging $400+ per round.

Give most folks several hours of that tee sheet and they could take the rest of the year off.  

[Tom Bacsanyi]

Sorry about another thread that includes what we're watching at Pinehurst, but it's interesting in many ways.

I can't help but think that we, as an industry and a sport, keep trying to reinvent what used to work just fine in days gone by. I like Pinehurst as it's set up as a Championship venue, but it's anything but sustainable or affordable to maintain. It's already been covered, but those naturalized areas at Pinehurst will require a lot of human intervention.

What was wrong with having a golf course with adequate centerline irrigation, as well as adequate irrigation at greens and tees(like Pinhurst now has), but have rough that is turf that gets mowed when the season and rainfall dictates, then gets left in a natural state when those elements also dictate? Why do we need such an elaborate plant scheme to define where a golfer would want to be or not want to be?

I doubt the golf industry will ever have a more sustainable model than that of the simple(for lack of a better term) muni maintenance level. I played the Mines yesterday(it had been a couple years since I had played there!), and, while not a single row irrigation system, has a much simpler, and perfectly adequate, maintenance regime. Bunkers where perfectly presented, greens were just fine, and everything seemed simple.

Will we end up doing what we used to, only to pat ourselves on the back with how clever we've become?

Joe

You are comparing apples to oranges with The Mines vs. Pinehurst.  If No. 2 was in the north, you could plant a lovely blend of hardy fescues in the "nativized" areas and call it a day.  The south has it much tougher.  There are no fescue equivalents among warm-season grasses that I know of, so you end up with wall-to-wall bermuda like No. 2 was, or a mishmash of good stuff and bad stuff like No. 2. is.  I prefer the latter.  Even unirrigated fescue areas in the north require a lot of work to establish (hydroseeding, temp irrigation, etc.), and after that one must patrol for invasive species.  Else you end up with a sea of thistle.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Joe, I recall one of my landscape architecture professors saying that things don't go around in circles, they go around in an upward helix...sort of a circle, but you don't end up at the exact same place the next time around.  And hopefully, it will be a bit higher.

In general and in golf, trying to use a human mind to solve a problem rarely involves just going back to the way it used to be.  Golf courses kept getting more complicated in an effort to make them more perfect examples of ANGC ideal.  I expect no less in the efforts to make courses meet the P2 ideal, if that becomes the ideal.

Besides, P2 is a high end course. As you say, if you really want the simple days of yore, drive to many courses in KS, NE, etc. where there was never any money to improve.  You will still get that 60's golf experience of patchy brown fw, browner roughs (unless it rains) etc.

As to irrigation, I still advocate for a return to those days, they went to double row, and I still think that is the minimum to cover the fw well without over watering some areas too much.  It sort of naturally keeps the middle green and the edges a fuzzy brown.  The next thing is to pipe it for every other day watering, rather than be concerned that there will be a few days in August where you get some browning, rather than try to be able to match the driest days on record.  Not sure when that idea fully took hold, but it sure drives up irrigation costs.

[Joe Hancock]

Tom,

I wasn't trying to compare P2 to the Mines, necessarily. I was noting the simplicity. So what I am questioning is if the naturalized areas at P2 are necessary or maybe having mowed bermudagrass that goes brown seasonally and gets mowed seasonally while relying on bunker placement and green design as the strategic directive of the design.

Jeff,

Interesting that you note that greening up a course beyond patchy brown fw and browner roughs is an improvement. I'm not sure I feel that way.

Joe

[Mike_Young]

Joe,
I agree.
For the average course in the PH area if one were to just use single row irrigation the grasses in the rough would become thinner and brown and golf would be played.   I they were to intentionally create the PH2 look it would require distributing pine straw, planting wire grasses , constantly spraying for unwanted weeds and more raking than is mentioned.  I like the look but it is not as natural to the area as if bermuda was left to grow in the roughs unwatered.  JMO

[jeffwarne]

Joe,
I agree.
For the average course in the PH area if one were to just use single row irrigation the grasses in the rough would become thinner and brown and golf would be played.   I they were to intentionally create the PH2 look it would require distributing pine straw, planting wire grasses , constantly spraying for unwanted weeds and more raking than is mentioned.  I like the look but it is not as natural to the area as if bermuda was left to grow in the roughs unwatered.  JMO

+1
or Palmetto circa 1985
sparse sandy roughs, actual native scrub areas (which were replaced by formal bunkers, grass bunkers post 1988 irrigation)
Proximity to ANGC didn't help
Turn the irrigation off along the edges and some interesting things could/did happen, and I don't think they would involve wiregrass

[Lou_Duran]

PH2, despite its $$$$$ greenfee, seems to get a lot of play.  Though what I saw on TV might be totally different than their normal maintenance practices, the brown stuff, at times approaching the centerlines and frequent around the greens, didn't appear to be healthy turf to me.  Those wonderful slow motion shots of divots exploding seemed to show mostly straw/dormant/stressed Bermuda and sand.  Some hue of green, certainly not tan, is a sign of healthy Bermuda.  Unless they saturate the fairways with their single row system to provide sufficient moisture to the parched areas which seem to surface drain all too well- or hand water the many hot areas which defeats the purpose of an automated system- can the heavily divot areas recover?

I played a course years ago in El Paso which, for whatever reason, stopped watering the outside edges of its fairways.  It was very evident that the surrounding desert was reclaiming the course, and though it was once a very popular, inexpensive public facility, the play on a Chamber of Commerce day was very light.  We may like fairway lines changing "naturally" on this website, but in an area such as Pinehurst where rain is insufficient to keep a course alive during important parts of the year, will the $400 resort customer put up with it?  I would guess not.

[Peter Pallotta]

Joe - terrific thread title; I think it's a very good way of describing the dynamcis involved. And for me the irony is that, for the vast majority of golfers, all that hard work is absolutely to no avail. That is, no one but golf-industry-insiders cares much about how a course achieves and maintains a pleasingly natural look and its fun and challenging playability; they only care that it does. And from what you and Don and others have written/achieved in this context, I'd assume that there are indeed many simpler and less expensive and more easily maintainable ways of getting there.  I've said this before, what I really enjoyed and appreciated about The Mines is that it gave me an education and a history lesson on the foundational principles (and joys and challenges) of golf course architecture and ideal maintenance, but didn it in a very pleasingly understated and subtle way, i.e. nothing about it felt forced.

Peter

[Joe Hancock]

I've been thinking of a great example of a well designed, highly regarded course in the South that I would hold up as a wonderful, relatively inexpensive maintenance meld that doesn't overpower the course itself. It finally came to me; Yeaman's Hall. Fairways that melt from well groomed hybrid bermudagrass to an amalgamation of common bermudagrass, common bahiagrass(paspalum) and carpetgrass that finally gives way to sand and pine straw under the trees. Just perfect, IMO.

Joe