[TEPaul]

Steve Lang:

I'm not proposing that all courses, public courses, whatever do what the Oakmonts, Merions, NGLAs etc do. And I'm not proselytizing for that everywhere. I'm merely saying if any course wants what they have and expects to get something remotely like what they have then they just need to understand what it is they need to do to get it and what it costs.

Look, I'm in this like anyone else. My own club probably doesn't want to spend the money to do what Merion, Oakmont, NGLA, Aronimink, PVGC do in this way. It's up to people like me to explain what that means to Green Committees and memberships if necessary. If people like me don't do that then they won't understand why they can't have the same thing for what they pay in maintenance operating budgets. They need to understand what they can hope for and what it is they can best expect with F&F with their resources. Supers can do it and of course they do, others do it. It's just a message that has to get out there.

Maybe "proselytizing" is the wrong word, maybe it sounds too harsh.

For God's sake, that world-class screwball Pat Mucci seems to think proselytizing is the same thing as prostitution!

[Craig Sweet]

Joe....hardening off the grass...making it tougher...I am all for it! I've been after my boss to do this the last three years...It does not scare me at all...

Earlier, TPaul had made a rather simplistic statement that it was easy to turn on the water,make everything soft and wet and not have to "watch it like a hawk"....I was saying that his statment was just as simplistic as suggesting we turn off the water cold turkey...

Hand watering greens?  I have done that every summer for the past 4 years and I can tell you it takes a lot more water than you can imagine to get a good deep soaking.

[TEPaul]

You know Craig, it seems like we are pretty much trying to get in the same direction here when it comes to playabiltiy goals. It would probably help in that effort if you wouldn't try to make it look like we're compeletely at cross purposes.

[Craig Sweet]

Tpaul...you stated that it was easier for superintendents to turn on the water and make everything wet, green and soft. It didn't require baby sitting like firm and fast does...I just wanted to point out that there is NOTHING easy about keeping your course wet (to wet?) all the time...

[TEPaul]

"Tpaul...you stated that it was easier for superintendents to turn on the water and make everything wet, green and soft. It didn't require baby sitting like firm and fast does...I just wanted to point out that there is NOTHING easy about keeping your course wet (too wet?) all the time..."

Craig:

Had I known that what I said would evoke this kind of response from you I probably would've phrased it differently. (If you're wondering whether that means---am I admitting that I was wrong?---I'd say, yes it probably does!).

However, I did say "fairly wet", and not too wet, as you seem to be implying (look at that post of mine).

It seems to me philosophically we probably are sort of on the same page on playability, and if we aren't I think that will be pretty apparent very soon. If we are on the same page phiosophically on playabiltity (F&F) I think it would be more productive to recognize and acknowledge that first rather than arguing over trivialities and the meaning of terms first and before we even have an opportunity of finding out whether we may be on the same page when it comes to playability.

[Kyle Harris]

Tom,

I think Craig is going down the avenue that even with keeping things green and wet, the superintendent is watching for a whole host of other problems like fungi, disease and insects. Water and heat are breeding grounds for all.

While equally as difficult in terms of attention, labor and manpower, these problems, to me, distract from maintaining playability and the purpose behind every activity done to maintain a golf course: cutting grass. As the superintendent is charged with keeping plants from dying of outside influences like the fungi, et al. he becomes more and more seperated from actually making the grass strong.

As an analogy, think of an athlete that comes down the flu. While he has the flu, he isn't focusing so much on training for his particular sport or even keeping himself in top shape to participate in that sport - but instead is focusing on overcoming the flu.

Keeping a golf course green and wet is the equivalent to dumping Tiger Woods into a pool of the influenza virus and expecting him to win the Masters.

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
I think Craig is going down the avenue that even with keeping things green and wet, the superintendent is watching for a whole host of other problems like fungi, disease and insects. Water and heat are breeding grounds for all."

That may be but I have a suspicion that there may be a huge middle ground here between a really good firm and fast maitenance program and one that is a totally over-irrigated, excessive fertilizer, redardant, remedial chemically dependent one.

In that middle ground may be most of the America's courses.

Which way will they generally go in the future? That's the question!

[Kyle Harris]

"Tom,
I think Craig is going down the avenue that even with keeping things green and wet, the superintendent is watching for a whole host of other problems like fungi, disease and insects. Water and heat are breeding grounds for all."

That may be but I have a suspicion that there may be a huge middle ground here between a really good firm and fast maitenance program and one that is a totally over-irrigated, excessive fertilizer, redardant, remedial chemically dependent one.

In that middle ground may be most of the America's courses.

Which way will they generally go in the future? That's the question!

Tom,

I think a preponderance of them will stay firmly entrenched in the middle ground. Your "Big World" theory seems to support this supposition. Why move in either direction when there's room for all?

Do other factors like this American ethos of advancement and rerooting and perhaps a contraction of golf properties influence the direction in which clubs will move in the future in terms of maintenance and architecture? Sure, but there are enough golf courses out there perfectly content with where they sit that the middle ground is here to stay.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

I have found myself agreeing with you a lot in recent weeks but this thread will break the string.  I'm 100% with Joe Hancock on this one.

The firm and fast conditions you see at all those great courses you've named only cost a lot of money because of two factors:  those great superintendents will spend whatever they have to so that they never lose a blade of grass and they keep their reputations intact, and their members have the money to maintain their superintendent's repuations and the aura of perfection.

What American golf really needs to embrace firm and fast, is the willingness to occasionally risk losing a bit of turf in extreme weather.  That's what Sean and Joe are trying to show you in all their examples of UK courses and modest-budget American courses ... that's the deal in most of the world where a superintendent who proposed spending $250,000 on hand watering and growth regulators would be ushered off for a stay in a white padded room.

Now, there are some parts of America where the UK approach just isn't feasible ... there's too much heat and soils which don't percolate very fast, and there is a much finer line between wilt and pythium.  Philadelphia is probably one of those places, although Stonewall does pretty well without a lot of cash and without a big reservoir, because Mr. May doesn't mind a bit of brown or even dead turf in an odd year.  Offline I would be glad to opine on some other areas where the intensive-care maintenance is just NOT warranted.

[TEPaul]

"Tom P:

"I have found myself agreeing with you a lot in recent weeks but this thread will break the string.  I'm 100% with Joe Hancock on this one.

"The firm and fast conditions you see at all those great courses you've named only cost a lot of money because of two factors:  those great superintendents will spend whatever they have to so that they never lose a blade of grass and they keep their reputations intact, and their members have the money to maintain their superintendent's repuations and the aura of perfection."

TomD:

That is exactly right and that's what I've been saying on here all along and all I've said. This is precisely what golf clubs who think they want to copy or need to copy what those kinds of clubs do need to know! They simply need to understand that if they want their courses to look like those clubs (almost no turf loss or even browning out) they pretty much need to do what those clubs do which costs a lot of money.

My entire point is that they don't really need to do that if they want firm and fast. All they need to know is that they can have firm and fast with some browning out during those stress times and they'll be just fine. I call that type of maintenance program "managing turf loss" because basically that's just what it is! The point is to just live with some browning out during those times and it will cost a lot less than doing what those big budget clubs do which is basically send an army of syringers out at a moments notice if they have to.

Frankly, I would estimate that probably less than 5% of American golfers even understand what dormancy (browning out) is. They think it's turf death and turf loss. We probably all think they simply hate the look of a brownish tinge. It may not be quite that simple. The fact is it may scare far more American golfers than we realize, as they probably think the course is dying. For some reason they don't seem to notice that about a day after a good rain the course is green again. That's dormancy and it ain't death, at least not necessarily.

And anyway how many American clubs have 40-50 people working on their course like the Merion Easts and Oakmonts do?

This kind of thing just isn't that hard to understand.  

[TEPaul]

"It comes back to golfers having stupid expectations because it is possible and some memberships having the cash to throw around."

Sean:

It sure does come back to that.

Our disagreement with Mark Fine on that point is that he seems to think it is perhaps the moral responsiblitity of those big budget clubs to stop doing what they do because it sets a bad example for other clubs who don't have the money to do that kind of thing and don't even understand that's what it takes if they expect their course to look like those big budget club courses.  

Our point is merely that it's not the responsibility of those big budget clubs, it's the responsibility of those clubs that don't have the money to understand they cannot expect their course to look like those big budget courses if they don't have the money or are not willing to spend that kind of money.

I don't understand why this is difficult to understand.

It's not much different than saying something like people who drive around in Ferraris have some moral responsibility not to do that because everyone else might think they should have Ferraris too without having to pay what it costs to buy one.

[TEPaul]

Sean:

Regarding your post #63, it very well may be that less than 5% of American golfers understand what dormancy is.

However, even if they began to understand dormancy isn't necessarily turf death, what I really fear, is they may not understand well enough it's quite a lot more complex than just that.

I'm no agronomist but it seems like dormancy or the extent or endurance of it is definitely a very variable thing from course to course, and if clubs fail to understand the ramifications of that they are walking a really dangerous line with their agronomy.

Grass being a living thing and perhaps even having a remarkable spectrum of performance, look, whatever, certainly does need time to transition and adjust from one extreme to another, or even from one part of the spectrum to another. If clubs don't know that or understand the ramifications of it with their course they probably will wipe it out.

Take a course that's been through years of over-irrigation, fertiizer, retardants, chemical dependency of every kind. To transition it to firm and fast you don't just shut off the water period. It probably takes 2-5 years to transition it over to a really dry and lean firm and fast program if it's even possible given the region, the soil make-up etc. It needs that time to adjust---eg get its roots deeper, more durable, less dependence on one artificial remediaiton after another etc.

I was talking to Donnie Beck at Fishers Island a summer or so ago. That course is one of the last of the great ones with no fairway irrigation system. It's always been that way.

His fairways were totally fried, brown as could be, but they were basically dormant because that turf there is used to that kind of thing as it pretty much has always plied its own natural way because of no artifical irrigation. I asked Donnie how long that turf could stay totally browned out albeit dormant and he said something like; "Oh, I don't know maybe a month, six weeks, whatever!"

That's just amazing.

Now, about four years ago before we got into a firm and fast transition maintenance program if I asked my super to get his fairway looking like Donnie's did that summer and he was crazy enough to try it he would've killed the entire golf course dead as a smelt, simply becasuse there was no way in hell our grass and it's dormancy mechanisms were ready for something like that.

We'll never go as far as Donnie and Fishers but we're getting there.  

[Tom_Doak]

Sean:

I was as surprised as anybody that Hoylake came back from the drought, because I thought all the traffic from the Open on top of the dormant grass would have more dire results.

However, the reason it came back at Hoylake is because the grass is adapted to the drought cycles ... that's the way they've always maintained it.  If they had tried to keep it green during the drought for the Open year, it probably would not have done so well in the next drought.

Letting the turf go without water on American courses in some regions will not just lead to dormancy ... there will be a lot of dead grass, because the grass has not been immunized to handle a drought in years past (and because in some places the conditions are much more harsh).

[wsmorrison]

I think it is safe to say that the Philadelphia region has a number of courses that have made it or are striving towards playability first and foremost.  Philadelphia sits in a very difficult zone for turf grass.  It seems to me, though very much a layman, if they can accomplish what they do here, they can do it elsewhere.  While some of the clubs spend a lot of money to provide near-championship conditions on a daily basis, and Merion actually achieves that when Nature allows, not all clubs spend well above average in the district (Philadelphia Country Club for example) and one in particular (HVCC) spends at or slightly below average for top-tier privates.   Of course, the more you spend (syringing) the better your playability and the better the look of the course as most golfers understand it.

I think the clubs that strive for firm and fast do accept varying amounts of turf loss and don't remediate the entire course because a fraction of the grass is beyond stressed.  A natural selection is allowed at least up to acceptable levels of turf loss.  Mike McNulty showed us the difference between turf that is actually dead and turf that is dormant.  It is hard to tell the difference without a close inspection, but there is no reason that the committees that make decisions shouldn't know the difference and back their supers to the membership.  

These clubs accomplish their goal of firm and fast in different ways with different budgets.  Of course playability standards, number of rounds, soils, etc differ from club to club in the district and of course beyond the district.  There isn't one way of doing things and there doesn't seem to be a requirement that budgets top the charts to achieve it, unless of course you want the course to be in US Open condition as much as is possible.  The last 10 percent or so to achieve championship conditions on a daily basis is very expensive.

What clubs are wary of is transition from too wet to a dryer approach.  The time to make the transition and the possible problems that could arise during the transition period could cause mutinies within the membership and loss of jobs to supers.  This makes the movement towards firm and fast a tricky one and many would rather accept what they know rather than risk something else.

[Tom_Doak]

Bob Ranum at Atlantic told me a great exercise he uses to teach his summer interns.

One week in the summer he will turn off the water on a single hole on a Thursday, and tell the intern that he is responsible for turning it back on -- but only when failing to do so would result in turf loss.  On the weekend the hole is nice and firm and fast compared to the rest.  By Tuesday or Wednesday if there hasn't been any rain the turf is starting to get brown or even purple and the intern usually panics and cries uncle.  

I asked Bobby if anybody had ever waited so long that Bobby had to intervene and he said they hadn't, but he started his experiment on a Thursday precisely because he could let it run 8 days max without the members having to see the place brown the following weekend.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

For Americans and American courses to think they can immediately do what many GB courses do and have done or even do it over time is a nice thought but one fraught with plenty of unexpected dangers.

To try to do something like that a club is going to have to really understand the inherent differences across the board between there and here.

Just look what Joe Dey did to the Creek Club over about 20 years trying to do that. Nice thought, admirable in theory maybe, but over time it took a real toll on the soil and the agronomy.

Apparently Joe forgot to tell Long Island New York and the Creek's grass it was supposed to think it was in Scotland and act like it.  

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