International golf course designers

[Mark_Rowlinson]

A question for you who are lucky enough to get to design and build courses in various different countries. How do you adapt to the various different climates? How do you know what grass strains to use in a country with such varied climates as China? What are the main considerations building in tropical heat and rain, parts of the world which are seriously frozen in winter and baking hot in summer, places in which water conservation is a priority and so on?

[Tom_Doak]

Mark:

We ask a lot of questions among the locals.  And we compare our local circumstances to other places we know better.  [I've mentioned before that Apache Stronghold was the toughest course I've ever worked on in this respect ... the property is 2000 feet higher than those in Phoenix and 2000 feet lower than those in the AZ mountains, so there really wasn't any course that offered comparable growing conditions.]

Grass types aren't really so hard.  They break down into two types:  warm season and cool season.  You have the same choices on Hainan Island as you do in Florida ... the climates are relatively similar.  I imagine that you have the same choices in Beijing as you do in New York or Washington, although I've only been to Beijing briefly, and never worried about building a course there.

The main consideration in tropical heat and rain, or frozen in winter, or baking hot in summer, or places in which water conservation is a priority?  It's pretty much the same one for all of those circumstances -- it's drainage!!  Good drainage mitigates the disease pressure in hot and humid climates, and it mitigates ice damage in freezing climates, too.

[Mike_Young]

Another consideration is maintenance.  If you know labor is 1.25 per hour or less and the supt will have 100 people on a crew then you might design an irrigation system that is very manual and computer free.  Parts and repairs will not be a problem and the same goes for mowing conditions and a design that can accommodate specific mowers when you know there are no qualified mechanics etc. 

[Tom_Doak]

Another consideration is maintenance.  If you know labor is 1.25 per hour or less and the supt will have 100 people on a crew then you might design an irrigation system that is very manual and computer free.  Parts and repairs will not be a problem and the same goes for mowing conditions and a design that can accommodate specific mowers when you know there are no qualified mechanics etc. 

You would be amazed how few developers in China seem to be going that direction, instead of buying all the latest bells and whistles.

[Mike_Young]

Another consideration is maintenance.  If you know labor is 1.25 per hour or less and the supt will have 100 people on a crew then you might design an irrigation system that is very manual and computer free.  Parts and repairs will not be a problem and the same goes for mowing conditions and a design that can accommodate specific mowers when you know there are no qualified mechanics etc. 

You would be amazed how few developers in China seem to be going that direction, instead of buying all the latest bells and whistles.

I know.  All it takes is them attending one trade show and going to the Rainbird or Toro booth. 

[Don_Mahaffey]

What I see happening is the irrigation manufacturers and their distributors offering to do the irrigation design. They make the offer under the guise that they will save the client the fees that the irrigation consultant would charge. Only question is, do you want the guy selling you all the parts to do the design as well? I've seen it up close and personal and it’s like the fox guarding the hen house. That 20-40K you save in fees can get eaten up 10 fold or more when you cede control to the guys selling the equipment.

I don't agree that you need to dumb everything down, be it equipment or irrigation, but it is important to match it up with those who will be caring for the course. You'll never convince me to do away with central control because a good central allows you to keep pipe and pump the proper size. Plus with the newer systems you do away with so many needless components, and it’s a lot less expensive to install. You start doing stand along control all the way around the golf course and you better plan for extra flow because you've lost the ability to flow control. Everyone in the world is using smart phones; you can find people to operate a simple central control.
 

[Tom_Doak]

What I see happening is the irrigation manufacturers and their distributors offering to do the irrigation design. They make the offer under the guise that they will save the client the fees that the irrigation consultant would charge. Only question is, do you want the guy selling you all the parts to do the design as well? I've seen it up close and personal and it’s like the fox guarding the hen house. That 20-40K you save in fees can get eaten up 10 fold or more when you cede control to the guys selling the equipment.

I don't agree that you need to dumb everything down, be it equipment or irrigation, but it is important to match it up with those who will be caring for the course. You'll never convince me to do away with central control because a good central allows you to keep pipe and pump the proper size. Plus with the newer systems you do away with so many needless components, and it’s a lot less expensive to install. You start doing stand along control all the way around the golf course and you better plan for extra flow because you've lost the ability to flow control. Everyone in the world is using smart phones; you can find people to operate a simple central control.
 

Don:

When I got into the business thirty years ago, most of the sprinkler companies were happy to provide the design for free if you bought their stuff.  Larry Rodgers started out doing free designs for the Toro distributor in Denver.  I don't know exactly when it was that the deal changed so you had to pay an irrigation designer to make Toro and Rainbird "compete" with each other.  I think the change helped absolve the sprinkler companies from blame for over-designing things; it was your own consultant who did that!

[Don_Mahaffey]

Tom,
I don't know about 30 years ago, but now there are so many options and possibilities that a system can cost anywhere from 500K to 3M depending on what everyone wants. I'm not saying anyone is unethical, but I am saying I think its better to have some independence when dealing with such a huge part of any project.

Do you want your fertilizer salesman telling you how to fertilize? Your seed salesman specifying all the seed? I know it happens, and I also know sometimes it works out fine, but I think the guys specifying the high ticket items should work for the client.

I've been working on golf courses/turf for about 30 years and I don't think things are the same as they were back then. The "industry" was a lot different 30 years ago, IMO.

[Mike_Young]

Don,
I'm not saying one has to dumb stuff down.  I think they have to do more of a dumb up .  And I definitely agree re the central control and in most cases a VFD pump.  But in so many Latin American courses you can get by with using quick couplers to establish rough.  When you get into areas that either have no rain for six months or so much rain for six months that no irrigation is used then you have to consider just how much labor one would really use and in some cases it would take years to make up for the automation. 
When I was selling turf equipment in the late 70's and early 80's I always questioned the fact that your best customers who really did not question you greensmower or fairway unit always paid more than the customer that was using the competitions mower.  And the Scott's Fertilizer guys could triple the price on some fertilizer programs just by writing the programs.  And of course we had the 55 gallons chemicals where a gallon was diluted 50 times and discounted 15 times.  But I still miss talking to those supts.  There were some characters with some tales to tell.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Mike,
If your saying a pure manual system, heads connected to a manual valve, then yes that would be cheaper then automation. (darn good way to irrigate too if you have the help) But, if your talking stand alone controllers with no central, I think you can put some of the newer tech central control systems in even cheaper then using a bunch of stand alone controllers. Its basically just one controller back at the office that communicates directly with the heads/valves.

I remember the Scotts days, and also the hard sell Toro/JD was doing trying to prove that a three year true lease with a new fleet coming in every 3 years was cheaper then buying and maintaining your own equipment. 

[Mike_Young]

Don,
I agree but you have a good point on a pure manual system.  When an owner can put 6 guys out each night (8 hours) to irrigate a place for less than $50 total per night....hmmmm...you can't justify much more than manual...can you?

[Wade Whitehead]

Since weather conditions in the States vary so widely, isn't it possible to compare any potential worldwide site to a current operation in America?  This, added to the local conversation Tom Doak describes, would seem to frame a fairly complete picture.

WW

[Micah Woods]

Grass types aren't really so hard.  They break down into two types:  warm season and cool season.  You have the same choices on Hainan Island as you do in Florida ... the climates are relatively similar.  I imagine that you have the same choices in Beijing as you do in New York or Washington, although I've only been to Beijing briefly, and never worried about building a course there.

I have to present an alternative view here. Grass growth is influenced by four primary factors: water, nitrogen, temperature, and light. Golf course superintendents are able to modify the amount of water and nitrogen available to the plant, leaving temperature and light as the factors influencing growth. In North America, there tends to be high sunshine in areas that also have temperatures suitable for warm-season grasses. In Asia, and certainly in tropical areas around the world, there tends to be less sunshine, meaning that the grasses that work in Florida may not be the right choice.

These charts show quite clearly the difference between Florida, other warm-season areas of the US, and Asia/other parts of the world.

http://www.blog.asianturfgrass.com/2011/11/list-of-climate-charts-china-india-japan-and-global.html

Miami and Sanya, as an example, have very similar temperatures throughout the year. Osaka and Atlanta, also, have nearly the same temperature month on month. But there is not a day in the year in which the average sunshine at Sanya is as much as it is at Miami, nor is there a day in which the average sunshine at Osaka approaches the average at Atlanta. This discrepancy in light available for photosynthesis is why the correct choice at Hainan Island is unlikely to be the correct choice in Florida.

With cool-season grass, differences in light from region to region are less important because the photosynthesis for cool-season grasses maxes out at a fraction of available sunshine. In that case, what works in New York will also work in an area with similar temperature somewhere else in the world.

[Tim Nugent]

Michah, I don't see that as an alternative view, just more detailed.  I think Tom was kust simplifying it.  That's where the "ask the locals lots of questions" comes in.  Once you know what American city/region is similar, than you pretty much have a good idea was to what species will grow. As to the best and then what specific is where the "ALO?'s comes in.
When we looked at doing a course in Croatia,when there weren't any, we asked to be taken to the Soccer stadium to see what they were growing there.
On the Big Island we were several thousand feet higher that the coastal resort courses and the other elevated courses were using Kikuyu.  Not wanting to go that route, we established a series of test plots immediately and by the time for grassing, were had a pretty good idea of what would work and what wouldn't.

[Micah Woods]

Thank you, that is a good approach to take. With cool-season grasses it is relatively easy to find an American city/region with similar weather. And with cool-season grasses, we can easily select based on temperature, desired playing characteristics, and soil/water properties.

With warm-season grasses, there are many places in the world that have a different species composition and a different climate to anywhere in the United States. In that case, it is especially advisable to study the local grasses, establish test plots, etc.

I point out this distinction because there has historically been (see this article from 2000 http://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/gcman/article/2000feb69.pdf) and continues to be overuse of grasses that work well in some areas of the United States but do not work well in warm-season areas of Asia. Simply considering temperature is not enough.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Micah, will you be in Las Vegas this week ?

[Tom_Doak]

Thank you, that is a good approach to take. With cool-season grasses it is relatively easy to find an American city/region with similar weather. And with cool-season grasses, we can easily select based on temperature, desired playing characteristics, and soil/water properties.

With warm-season grasses, there are many places in the world that have a different species composition and a different climate to anywhere in the United States. In that case, it is especially advisable to study the local grasses, establish test plots, etc.

I point out this distinction because there has historically been (see this article from 2000 http://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/gcman/article/2000feb69.pdf) and continues to be overuse of grasses that work well in some areas of the United States but do not work well in warm-season areas of Asia. Simply considering temperature is not enough.

Micah:

Thanks for your more detailed explanation.  I was trying to simplify things a bit in my answer to Mark Rowlinson, because I thought the distinction between cool-season and warm-season options was probably enough for him.  By the same token, I've never had anyone bring up the difference in available sunlight in Asia, where we are just starting work on our first project.  I appreciate your point of view, and would love to talk with you some more about it.

Unfortunately, though, the grass salesmen have already smothered my client and project manager, and convinced them that they need the latest and "best" Paspalum grass possible [Platinum!  A perfect name to sell in Asia!], regardless of the conditions on our particular site.  I wonder how well it will hold up against being scrubbed by silt when the river comes up and large portions of our golf course flood?  Those are the kinds of questions that the Platinum salesmen don't really dwell on.  I doubt they've done a test plot for flooding!

[Micah Woods]

Don, I won't be at Las Vegas this week.

Tom, thank you, I don't think many people are aware of the difference in light from the US to Asia. Lots of attention is paid to temperature and precipitation, and little is given to light. The only place in the US I'm aware of that has a warm climate and a similar amount of restriction on light from clouds is Hilo. Practically, it is a subtle difference, but long-term it results in different climax species. On golf courses, ideally, we would plant the climax species from the start.

As for flooding, there were about 20 courses in central Thailand that flooded in fall of 2011. This was inundation of more than a meter of water for about two months. The courses with seashore paspalum (including one with Platinum) did no better than the ones with bermuda, or the climax species of zoysia or carpetgrass. In fact, bermuda, to my surprise, survived and recovered from the flood the best. Seashore paspalum usually thrives in a wet environment and I had expected it to survive the flooding with flying colors.

For anyone really interested in this, I've written a bit more and shown a few pictures of the awesome shade-tolerant grasses at Wack Wack in Manila, and even have a short video about this topic:

http://www.blog.asianturfgrass.com/2012/02/sunshine-zoysia-and-grass-performance-in-asia.html

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Tom, Thank you for simplifying things. I am a mere onlooker which is why I asked the questions in the first place.

However, I am very aware of differences of soils. At home here we are on acidic soil (we have a natural heath just down the road) and we can grow successfully camellias and other acid-loving plants. Within 100 yards of our house the soil is alkaline. What you can and cannot grow in your garden is totally different. Of course, you can use tubs, pots and other containers, but you can hardly do that on a golf course - or can you?

Years ago I visited Reese Heath College in Nantwich, Cheshire. Basically this is an agricultural college, but it does practical courses for potential golf greenkeepers, cricket ground caretakers, grass tennis court superintendents and so on. The class room is a golf course, which changes as new problems are solved and new trends are assessed. It will have been in the early 90s that I visited and Nicklaus was building (or at least occasionally visiting) his course at nearby Carden Park. He (or his company) was advocating some blue strain of grass (I don't know whether for fairways, rough or greens, but it is irrelevant). Reese Heath planted some. There wasn't enough sunlight in Cheshire for it to flourish.

Transport yourselves to Burgundy and the Cote d'Or in particular. This is where terroir comes in. You have essentially the same Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes (different clones, I concede) and you have a strip of rising ground at times a mile wide, sometimes less. Yet Pommard is different from adjoining Beaune, the different terroirs in Nuits-St-Georges are seriously different, and the differences between Romanee-Conti and La Tache I can only imagine - I shall never be able to afford the comparative tasting. And this is all in a microclimate maybe fifty miles long.

Does the same apply to golf grasses?

[Tom_Doak]

Tom, Thank you for simplifying things. I am a mere onlooker which is why I asked the questions in the first place.

However, I am very aware of differences of soils. At home here we are on acidic soil (we have a natural heath just down the road) and we can grow successfully camellias and other acid-loving plants. Within 100 yards of our house the soil is alkaline. What you can and cannot grow in your garden is totally different. Of course, you can use tubs, pots and other containers, but you can hardly do that on a golf course - or can you?

Years ago I visited Reese Heath College in Nantwich, Cheshire. Basically this is an agricultural college, but it does practical courses for potential golf greenkeepers, cricket ground caretakers, grass tennis court superintendents and so on. The class room is a golf course, which changes as new problems are solved and new trends are assessed. It will have been in the early 90s that I visited and Nicklaus was building (or at least occasionally visiting) his course at nearby Carden Park. He (or his company) was advocating some blue strain of grass (I don't know whether for fairways, rough or greens, but it is irrelevant). Reese Heath planted some. There wasn't enough sunlight in Cheshire for it to flourish.

Transport yourselves to Burgundy and the Cote d'Or in particular. This is where terroir comes in. You have essentially the same Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes (different clones, I concede) and you have a strip of rising ground at times a mile wide, sometimes less. Yet Pommard is different from adjoining Beaune, the different terroirs in Nuits-St-Georges are seriously different, and the differences between Romanee-Conti and La Tache I can only imagine - I shall never be able to afford the comparative tasting. And this is all in a microclimate maybe fifty miles long.

Does the same apply to golf grasses?

Mark:

Sandy soils and clay certainly present different problems for the superintendent, and may sometimes affect the choice of grasses, but our palette is much more limited than the gardener's.  One good example is that fescue is better adapted to very sandy soils than bentgrass, but because bent is considered the "better" surface by most people [assuming an infinite maintenance budget], fescue had been all but abandoned here in the U.S. until recently.

Soil pH also plays its role, but most golf courses tend to treat the soils to get the pH in the range they want, rather than choosing a different grass because of it.  I remember well when we did the soil tests for High Pointe, my first course, the pH came in as extremely acidic and the superintendent's first reaction was "it would take all the lime in the world to get that to where we want it."  After a day's thought, however, he realized there was already grass growing over much of the course, so the pH must not matter as much as he was taught!

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Micah and Tom thanks for lifting this discussion to a higher more informative level.

[Neil Noble]

I'm a little late on this discussion but Micah makes a good distinction and there are tools for measuring this.  Every project can benefit from a weather station placed on site from ground breaking or as soon as the developer confirms a location.  Many devices are now stand alone and will store data for months.  Make sure the device measures more than air temps. add radiation and soil temp at a 10cm depth.

Cloud cover, fog or shade can leave the grass on a 90 degree day with less radiation than a clear 70 degree day.  Any course using paspalum on a site with trees in or near the rough will learn that even a couple hours of shade will result in poor wear tolerance, this worsens as trees mature.

Morning sun is more important than afternoon sun so if you have severe terrain or tall vegetation where the morning sun does not hit a green or tee until 9 AM Bermudagrass and Paspalum will be weak.  Eventhough it had never been used on a golf course in Hawaii we used Zoysia Japonica on Royal Hawaiian C.C. (now Luana Hills) because as the jungle encroached, as they tend to do, there was not enough sunlight to support bermudagrass or paspalum.  These roughs are still very strong after the jungle has encroached severely.

Just a note on everyone who supports paspalum wall to wall; I have been watching, growing and even producing it for over 20 years and it has a place but that place isn't everywhere, if you don't have bad water or salts wicking up in your soil or if you have bad water and a heavy soil think twice. 

Maintaining paspalum above 1" is likely to cause long-term problems thus all the "spongy" comments.  Zoysiagrass roughs can give a nice contrast and the two can be maintained seperate chemically but if established properly encroachment is not significant.


As mentioned always ask questions of the locals and schedule your agronomist, if you use one, an extra day or two on his initial visit to visit with landscapers, farmers and just drive around and take-in the local vegetation.  All this information gathered adds to the puzzle and helps to make better decisions.

One suggestion for architects when selecting grasses in unique micro-climate sites is to be somewhat vague (note one of these grasses... final determination based on site specific information now being collected), or postpone that determination as long as you can. Also don't be afraid to have make a change during construction if new information comes to light.  I have been involved with some grass changes 1-2 years after opening because nobody wanted to admit there was a better grass than the one specificed during design 4 years earlier.

[Micah Woods]

Thanks Neil. It is painful to see the wrong grass planted, and like you I've also seen many courses that have changed grasses right after opening because the original ones were not acceptable.

Probably of interest to anyone who is reading this thread, because it is somewhat related to this topic of grass selection in different climates, with particular reference to my interest in warm-season grasses, I recorded this video with Larry Stowell from PACE Turf (http://www.paceturf.org/) on the topic of climatological data and managed turfgrass:

http://youtu.be/VtePVWvRyug

[Scott Macpherson]

HI Micah,

I really enjoyed the video. Very informative... especially for someone like me who has mainly worked in cool-season trufgrass places.

Tell me, looking at the last chart, what type of turf would you recommend in a place like Cape Town when the sunshine (intensity??) hours where quite high, but the temp lower?

regards,

Scott

[Micah Woods]

Hi Scott,

You put me on the spot with one of the places I've not been to! Let me compare the data for Cape Town to places I have been and explain how I would use these data as a starting point in identifying grass species that would likely succeed.

Based on annual climatological normals data, Cape Town has the same sunshine as San Diego and the average temperature is one degree cooler; Cape Town is slightly sunnier than Atlanta, and half a degree warmer; slightly warmer than Melbourne and cooler than Sydney, and appreciably sunnier than both.

It would seem then that creeping bentgrass greens would probably be a good choice, with bermudagrass (Cynodon) or kikuyugrass through the green. Cool-season grasses could work at Cape Town through the green, but because of improved water use efficiency of warm-season grasses, over a long period of time the warm-season grasses would be better. Cool-season on the greens works because of the small surface area of greens getting micromanaged. But one would not want to do that for the entire course.

We have to look at the monthly variation too, and we see then why a lot of courses in Atlanta use ultradwarf bermudagrass on greens. Of all the cities mentioned above, Atlanta has the highest annual temperature in its hottest month of the year, and that is five degrees higher, on average, than at Cape Town.

One still needs to see what is actually growing, and succeeding, in that location, and it is especially useful to talk with local golf course superintendents about the relative performance of different grasses.