Fescue On Rich Soils

[David_Tepper]

Kalen B. -To answer your question, at certain times of the year and with a lot of rain the fescue on links courses can get out of hand and become pretty dense & thick. The areas where the fescue grows the thickest are usually in the swales & hollows, as that is where the rain water collects and takes the longest to drain.DT

[Tom Bacsanyi]

Alan raises a good point, the best native presentation in my area (Rocky Mountains) is bunch type fescues. They are dense enough to look like a consistent stand from afar and give off that blazing straw-colored hue once they dry out in early summer. Playability is not as good as a uniform wispy stand, however playability (and findability) is much better than the typical dense tallgrass areas. You usually have a decent chance to find your ball, and the ball is typically in between the bunches on soil, but you can usually advance it pretty well. I kind of like the variability of the bunch fescues, as you have a very different outcome if you have a bunch directly behind your ball vs. a clean lie in the dirt.

[John Emerson]

Alan raises a good point, the best native presentation in my area (Rocky Mountains) is bunch type fescues. They are dense enough to look like a consistent stand from afar and give off that blazing straw-colored hue once they dry out in early summer. Playability is not as good as a uniform wispy stand, however playability (and findability) is much better than the typical dense tallgrass areas. You usually have a decent chance to find your ball, and the ball is typically in between the bunches on soil, but you can usually advance it pretty well. I kind of like the variability of the bunch fescues, as you have a very different outcome if you have a bunch directly behind your ball vs. a clean lie in the dirt.

Tom,
I always felt like the bunch ff’s heavily increased the weed pressure from a less dense canopy and more sunlight hitting the soil.  The amount of time/money spent on weed control seems to outweigh the benefit. Honestly I don’t see many courses plant the right grasses for the get-go.  The ones that fail miserably are the ones that plant tall fescue, kbg, ryegrass etc, but claim to have “fescue native rough”. This is no different than a water hazard IMO.

[Jim Sherma]

No different than a hazard unless it’s unmarked and becomes a stroke and distance penalty.

[Buck Wolter]

I was being a little flippant about Roundup but wonder if where there's overgrowth or a monostand if you couldn't thin it out by dragging some soaked rags behind an atv -- even if you didn't kill the plants maybe stress them enough that they didn't take over.


The worst to me is where the edge of the native just past the rough gets super juicy from the irrigation or at the bottom of a slope and I assume you get surface drainage to that area --you just miss but are in lost ball territory. Make that area rough or at least mow it once every couple of weeks down to 6" so you can find a ball. Its usually where the fairway falls off naturally so its a double whammy.