PA Am at Huntingdon Valley

[James Bennett]

Tom, Craig

Craig's comments about roots reflecting leaf could have a component of my experience.  The deepest roots have been when the green is being established, and the mowing heights the highest.  The 'die-back' has occurred when lower green heights have occurred.  

We kept our greens somewhat long at 3mm, but have gone longer to 3.5mm (currently 4mm in winter).  This is partly to stop them getting too fast (we aim for 10 to 11 feet, closer to 10 feet in summer, closer to 11 feet in winter).  When we had a dry weekend a week ago, the greens were faster than 12 feet - no surface moisture thorugh a week long sunny spell, and the time when the growth regulator kicked in the most!

Certainly, the frequent rolling and dusting we have done for the last couple of years has enabled us to keep the grass leaf longer whilst retaining a desirable greens pace.

I've been impressed by the A1 and G series I've seen in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.  I'm also happy with our mix of 1019/1020.  For my club, we have more significant areas of improvement to concentrate on (trees and light/air to playing surface, bunker re-construction, all-year roughs).  We'll continue improving our existing surfaces, and hopefully 2005/06 will be anthracnose -free - it has been on our newer greens (12 years old) but we have faced it on our oldest (25 to 40 years) and smallest (often shadiest) greens over the alst two years.

[TEPaul]

In response to my post #47, Pete Galea sent me this on the IM;

"Tom,
I was just reading the PA Am thread and something was written that I must clarify.
Roots do not "SEEK" water. 'They" (roots) can not "smell it" or otherwise sense there is water nearby, they posess no sensory mechanism.

Roots will only grow in the presence of water.

So, if you had 6 inch roots and the top of the perched water table was
one-half inch below that, the grass roots would not drive deeper to "find" it. The whole depth of the soil profile must be moist for the roots to thrive. This does not mean saturated, there must be a percentage of air in the pore space too."

This is why this website is so good, in my opinion. The sources of info from the supers on here is excellent. We layman have a lot to learn about agronomy, and the more we learn the better things will be in golf between golfers, committees and supers.

[James Bennett]

In another thread on course agronomy, Geoff Childs recommended the Lincoln Roden Feature Interview from 2001, regarding Huntingdon Valley's approach to firm and fast, amongst other topics discussed.  from that interview were some relevant quotes.  heres one relating to why such deep roots have been achieved.

'In rebuilding these C9 greens we removed and stockpiled the old original green soil, shaped and staked the green contours at the subsoil level, and then mixed new green soil with the old, and then contoured the greens. Note these are 'push-up greens', not the newer perched water tables. They are built similarly to the original soil and organic matter greens, and they have an unusually high soil content by today’s standard. All 27 greens are similar and should play similarly. When dry they play much harder than the new-type greens with a high sand content. The C9 soil greens also hold much more deep moisture than the high sand content modern greens. Thus the roots are deeper and the surfaces can be maintained dryer than the new design greens.'

thanks Geoff for the reference - helps explain how things are achieved.

[TEPaul]

James:

Regarding the rebuilding of the "C" nine greens or perhaps some of the rest, an interesting inclusion should be made here. To record the playable grades, contours etc of the greens before the rebuilding process, apparently HVGC hired one Ed Connor to shoot and record all that. Connor is the same man who shot all the grades, contours etc of Pinehurst #2 (with his new "laser theodolite", a computer and computer modeling program) before the rebuilding of those greens. There's a story extant that consequently the greens of Pinehurst #2 became far more crowned because of that (actually the sides became steeper)----or because of a miscalculation on the total height of the layers and how that tied into the grade of the green surrounds (or more accurately didn't tie in as before ).

(My information on the Pinehurst greens comes from architect Stephen Kay who claims his information came to him directly from Richard(?) Tufts).