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Jim Johnson

Grass
« on: June 24, 2011, 02:12:25 PM »
No, not the Cheech & Chong variety.  ;D

Several recent threads have me curious about which cultivars are on various golf courses ... what's on the greens, what's in the fairways, and what's on the teeboxes.

Feel free to chime in with any course(s) you're familiar with, their cultivars, and any other interesting tidbits ... HOC, frequency of cut, etc.

Thanks.
Jim

Jim Johnson

Re: Grass
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2011, 02:42:36 PM »
Okay, I'll start...

From a September 2008 posting that Jeff Mingay made on behalf of Richard Zokol on "Sagebrush", the wonderful creation in the interior of British Columbia, Canada (get there if you haven't already done so)...

Fairway: - Fairways/tees are seeded with a mixture of Chewings/Creeping Fescues and Colonial Bentgrass, 90% Fescues and 10% Colonial Bent. 
Green: - Greens are seeded to Creeping Bentgrass. The seed blend on greens is Extreme Dominant (Providence & SR 1119). 



I'll add a personal note here to say that I golfed for the second time at Sagebrush last August, and I thought they were the finest putting greens I've ever experienced... absolutely pure, great roll, etc. So kudos to Dick, and Whit, and Jeff, and Armen Suny, and the great staff at Sagebrush.


Okay, now it's somebody else's toke. Um, I mean turn.

Mac Plumart

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Grass
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2011, 03:03:07 PM »
I'm no good at this, but I have been taking notes along the way of my travels and getting better at turfgrass recognition and playability characteristics.  I say "better", but I am nowhere near good at it.

Ballyneal and its wall-to-wall fescue was an eye opener to me.  Maybe it is the mix of fescue grass and the soil consistency, but it is freakin' awesome to play gol on!

Rock Creek has bluegrass.

East Lake has zyosia fairways and bermuda green that are rock hard.  I really don't like this mix as it seems the zyosia is "sticky" and when the bunkering allows a run up shot, it is hard to get it through the grass.  And with this "sticky" aspect and the bunkering, the aerial game is called for...but with rock hard greens it is hard as heck to get the ball near the hole (or to hold the green, depending on your skill level).

Lots of bermuda down South.
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

Jeff_Brauer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Grass
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2011, 03:14:06 PM »
Probably more variety than ever because the seed salesman are doing such a great job.  Not just a few standard choices.

I hear more talk about grass varieities now in clubhouses than I ever heard in the 70's in the college dorms.
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Ted Cahill

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Grass
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2011, 04:15:29 PM »
I spent a lot of time in Texas and Florida in the past year.  Almost always played on Bermuda- which I accept and understand is necessary for these climates- but leaves something to be desired, especialy the rough (where I usually reside).  However, I played Newport Dunes near Corpus Christi, TX- a particularly good "linksy" course and it was grassed with Paspalum.  I loved how it felt and how the ball ran out in the fairways.  A considerable improvement over Bermuda.  I'm crossing my fingers that it is used at Streamsong.
“Bandon Dunes is like Chamonix for skiers or the
North Shore of Oahu for surfers,” Rogers said. “It is
where those who really care end up.”

Jim Johnson

Re: Grass
« Reply #5 on: June 24, 2011, 11:39:13 PM »
From an email I received a year or two ago from Josh Mahar, super at Wild Horse in Nebraska...

We have Award, Midnight, Liberator, Unique for bluegrass varieties. We did put in 10% perennial rye during seeding and it accounts for about 30-40% of our stand now. We cut around 3/8" which is pretty short for the bluegrass but the rye doesn't mind it. Wouldn't do that if just had blue or would have nothing but poa in short order.  But anyway the new bluegrasses are awesome, but they don't green up very fast in the spring and go to sleep early in the fall - takes some warm weather to really get em going.
We have Providence/ SR1119 bentgrass @ under .1 inch which I really like - mainly because I am very familiar with it.

Maybe Dick can expand on how much he likes things at Wild Horse.

Jim

Mat Dunmyer

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Grass
« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2011, 10:08:22 AM »
Okay, I'll start...

From a September 2008 posting that Jeff Mingay made on behalf of Richard Zokol on "Sagebrush", the wonderful creation in the interior of British Columbia, Canada (get there if you haven't already done so)...

Fairway: - Fairways/tees are seeded with a mixture of Chewings/Creeping Fescues and Colonial Bentgrass, 90% Fescues and 10% Colonial Bent. 
Green: - Greens are seeded to Creeping Bentgrass. The seed blend on greens is Extreme Dominant (Providence & SR 1119). 



I'll add a personal note here to say that I golfed for the second time at Sagebrush last August, and I thought they were the finest putting greens I've ever experienced... absolutely pure, great roll, etc. So kudos to Dick, and Whit, and Jeff, and Armen Suny, and the great staff at Sagebrush.


Okay, now it's somebody else's toke. Um, I mean turn.

Jim:
Just a minor technicality with your topic here- when you say cultivar, you must really mean grass type. A cultivar is a sub type of grass. It's like having a a BMW 735Li and depending on the letters after the model # that is what the cultivar is. The grass type we planted at Rock Creek on the fairways and tees was Kentucky Bluegrass that was 4 different cultivars- Midnight, Nu Glade, Impact, and Award. These different cultivars have slightly different characteristics that make them genetically and physically different (helped us do the tight, firm and fast thing). On the greens they were seeded to Bentgrass, the Providence cultivar. The Providence cultivar does better in the high desert climate of southwestern Montana. When we choose seed types it's important to choose the best cultivar for the give region and turf conditions. There is an independent evaluation program that tests the all of the new seed cultivars and compares them to one another in the given regions of the country. For all of you interested in this stuff, check out the link below:

http://www.ntep.org/contents2.shtml

Hopefully I didn't confuse too many people!!

Mat

Alex Miller

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Grass
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2011, 01:27:20 PM »
Every other kind of playing surface is cake when you're used to Kikuyu fairways and rough and Poa greens. That is all.  ;D

Anthony_Nysse

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Grass
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2011, 01:37:52 PM »
Of the places that I have been employed at, with the higher heights at transition or aerification:

Long Cove Club
-Tifeagle greens mowed at .105-.130"
-419 Fwys mowed at .400-.650"
-Celebration tees/Zoysia mowed at .400-.650"

Colonial CC
-A4 bentgrass greens mowed at .110-.125"
-419 fwys and tees mowed at .375-.600"

Pine Tree GC
-Tifeagle greens mowed at .070-.130"
-419 fwys mowed at .375-.600"
-Tifeagle tees mowed at .200-.250"
Anthony J. Nysse
Director of Golf Courses & Grounds
Apogee Club
Hobe Sound, FL

Kyle Harris

Re: Grass
« Reply #9 on: June 29, 2011, 07:47:40 PM »
To add to what Mat started:

Cultivar is a portmanteau of "cultivated variety," meaning the variety was selected through processes of selective pressure for a certain set of characteristics. Almost all cultivars of bentgrass are Agrostis stolinifera or Creeping bentgrass.

Be sure to check the circumstances under which the trials for NTEP are conducted. In many instances, aberrations are due to management practices such a N+/1000, etc.  
« Last Edit: June 29, 2011, 08:03:00 PM by Kyle Harris »

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Grass
« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2011, 08:00:15 PM »
Jim:

It's funny how much people like to talk about grass cultivars, whether they understand them or not.  I met with a potential new client on Monday, and though he did not offer many tidbits on design, he talked a lot about different cultivars of Bermuda grass, based on his experiences with them on past projects and other local efforts.  It was really way too early to be thinking about grass selection, but this was a topic he had made a lot of notes about, and he was eager to help.

I have seen and played on just about every kind of grass you could imagine.  When I worked for Pete Dye, and I'd been traveling around just a little bit, he asked me cryptically which course I had seen had done the most experimenting with different types of grass, and I immediately said Pine Valley ... the old super there, Eb Steineger, had test plots for everything, including various native species for use in the waste areas.  I quickly realized that was Pete's point.  He was not afraid to try different things, sometimes to the point it was ludicrous ... I remember at Austin Golf Club, they had a bentgrass green right next to St. Augustine in the rough, with the same sprinkler head hitting both of them!

Just in the top 100 courses in the world, you will find bentgrass, fescue, ryegrass, bluegrass, bermuda, poa annua, zoysia, and kikuyu used as the primary fairway grass.  You can even find five of those on the greens of a top 100 course!!

Sadly, in the past 30 years, the turf researchers have spent most of their efforts on developing tighter grasses for the fairways and greens, and have ignored trying to develop maintenance-lite grasses for the roughs.  That's what we need now.


P.S. to Kyle H:  "Portmanteau" ?  Really?  You should be careful of using words your boss has to look up.

Jim Johnson

Re: Grass
« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2011, 09:37:30 PM »
Tom, one interesting grass which has been discussed here from time to time is velvet.

I know that Duane Sharpe has/had a green of velvet in the practice area at his Blackhawk course near Edmonton (Alberta). Sharpee showed it to us when he hosted us several years ago. I recall him saying that it was his staff's favorite green to mow, it felt like walking on carpet. But, every summer it seemed to deteriorate and had trouble healing itself from ball marks. I believe that Eagles Nest (Ontario, Canada) a Doug Carrick design (Ian A.?), sowed its fairways and greens with velvet but I could be mistaken.

Jim

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