Overseed in the Southwest vs the Southeast

[Peter Ferlicca]

I currently work as a golf course superintendent in Phoenix, Arizona.  It seems like every year we attend 3-5 big seminar meetings about water rights, water allotment, water droughts, etc, etc.  The university of Arizona just did a huge research project that should how important golf is to the overall economy of Arizona (home sales, tourism, on and on).  Golf courses only use 1.2% of potable water in Arizona, a shocking number for many residents that think we just waste water. 


On to the main topic though. 


I read Ran's post about how great golf is on dormant Bermuda, there is currently a thread going on right now about winter conditions in the southeast being superior with the fast and firm dormant Bermuda.  I have made many calls to superintendents in the southeast region (Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Sandhills, HiltonHead, most of Florida) that are no longer overseeding and just painting or not even painting (Paints have improved so much lately, some novice golfers can't even tell.) 


The southeast doesn't have a shortage on rain whatsoever, but yet for some reason they have realized that dormant Bermuda is the way to go now. 


Yet, the southwest pays insane amounts for even reclaimed water for the golf courses, and yet we still overseed like crazy.  I have mentioned it to a couple of guys out here about not overseeding fairways, and they look at my like I am crazy.  The only course in the Phoenix area that has done it is Desert Forest (primarily a walking club that is very private) and now Scottsdale National (very private and mainly walking).


How much play does the Southeast big golf resorts, private clubs get in the winter time compared to the southwest where 85% of the play is from November till April. 


Cart traffic is obviously the main issue here as many courses in the desert are meant to be cartball courses compared to the southeast.  Could the dormant Bermuda handle 35K to 45K rounds of carts driving and beating down the fairways all winter long. 


Trust me I love the look of overseeded rye fairways just as much as the next guy, but I also find the pictures of Scottsdale National with their painted fairways and fast and firm conditions look amazingly fun too.  Will the general public buy into this idea out here in the southwest, or will it forever be expected to overseed?

[jeffwarne]

People tend to go to the southwest for the winter-for warmth and warm weather conditions, so seeing green would seem important to the northern snowbird.
Southeast golfers for the most part live there year round so they are aware of tradeoffs and aren't escaping a northern winter.
I'd guess most southestern resorts overseed though.
I assume Sea Island does? Hilton Head certainly did though i remember one year the Fazio(George) course didn't overseed the fairways but rather the roughs for contrast.


Palmetto overseeds.It surprises me that they do, being a year round club but they make a lot of their budget for the year looking their finest that second week in April.
Augusta CC has gone to zoysia so they don't.


35-45k cart rounds would take a toll on non overseeded areas and definitely be an issue with divots esp in collection areas.
When I was at Long Cove they would swith gears every year or two as there are tradeoffs to both at a busy year round course.
It always seemed when they switched they were forgetting the drawbacks of the other method and would go the other way the following year.

[Jason Topp]

Peter:


When I lived in Tucson (80's) there were a few courses that did not overseed fairways.  Tucson Country Club was the best experience of the group although it operated much more like a traditional local country club than did nearly every other venue in town.  It was a traditional non-desert course with a lot of walkers.  I have no idea what they do today.


The others that did not overseed seemed to have suffered for the choice.  Usually they were lower end courses that seemed to be cutting cost rather than maximizing revenue.  The county course (Arthur Pack) and Fred Enke were two examples. In Scottsdale, Desert Mountain used to not overseed the Outlaw course but I think that changed a number of years ago. 


I do think the overseeding question is fundamentally different in Arizona than it is in the Southeast.  As a midwesterner, a trip to the Southeast in the dead of winter is a gamble because you never know what weather you can get.  Arizona is almost a sure thing in generating pleasant playable days.  I would expect Arizona courses would be filled with divots without any grass growth.


By contrast, play in the southeast will consist of locals and wear will be significant.  I do find dormant greens to be less desireable late winter because the greens get pretty dried out and one has to judge the wear in deciding what speed to expect.


I would love to play dormant AZ courses but I do not represent a large portion of the market. 


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[Tom_Doak]

When I was at Long Cove they would swith gears every year or two as there are tradeoffs to both at a busy year round course.
It always seemed when they switched they were forgetting the drawbacks of the other method and would go the other way the following year.

That might have been a strategy.  Overseeding every year weakens the bermudagrass underneath in certain climates.  Once you get up to the Carolinas there are not as many months of hot weather for growing bermuda.


Likewise, North Scottsdale, AZ is at a higher altitude than the rest of the valley around Phoenix and the courses up there have always suffered from weakness after overseeding . . . the ryegrass doesn't burn off until later in the year, and the bermuda doesn't have as many months of good growth.


Microclimate is often overlooked as a factor in grassing decisions.  100 miles of latitude or 1000 feet of altitude make a big difference.

[jeffwarne]

When I was at Long Cove they would swith gears every year or two as there are tradeoffs to both at a busy year round course.
It always seemed when they switched they were forgetting the drawbacks of the other method and would go the other way the following year.

That might have been a strategy.  Overseeding every year weakens the bermudagrass underneath in certain climates.  Once you get up to the Carolinas there are not as many months of hot weather for growing bermuda.

Originally it was-Palmetto does this to some degree.Not exactly every other year.


But at Long Cove with Supers changing and Committees changing it became more of a reaction to the previous year until after I left and they locked in on one Superintendant and long term strategy.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

As the cost of effluence rises, my club in the West Valley of Phoenix is seriously considering " liquid overseeding" for one of our 3 courses on a rotating basis. Our primary concern is the amount of play we have during prime season- about 12-13,000 rounds per month total from November through April. Excessive divots on the course with dormant Bermuda fairway may not recover. Since we have many snowbirds here, they want to see green, no ifs and or buts about that.


Even Desert Forest in Carefree overseeds now. They didn't up until a few years ago.

[Don Mahaffey]

Climate, golf culture, and busy golf season is so different between the two regions.
While Florida may have the snow bird culture and winter golf business approach of AZ and inland Ca, most of the SE is a true 12 month season.
You’d never get the golfers there to agree to closing down in the fall and living with horrendous transitions in June. 
It’s been awhile, but I was a GM in AZ and the profits in winter vs losses summer drive everything.

[Ken Moum]

I would love to play dormant AZ courses but I do not represent a large portion of the market. 


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Well, you've got one supporter here.  When I first started coming to AZ in winter, in 1981, My Dad's home course, Mesa CC didn't overseed fairways, and the conditions amazing for actually playing golf.  The only drawback IMHO was that they did overseed the greens and the runoff from watering them made the approaches really, really soft.


2019 was the first time I ever spent the summer here, and when they stopped watering and scalped everything to overseed it got fast and firm.  With the undulations Dye built into it, you could even play some holes as if they were on linksland.

[Kyle Harris]

Based on the first paragraph in the OP:


Less golf in AZ would mean less demand for homes which would lead to less demand for potable water.


Do we actually take the rhetoric beyond one step anymore?

[SB]

The southeast can be broken into three distinct climates and golf economies.  South of Jacksonville, the economy is similar to Phoenix, with most revenue coming from January to March, but the climate, particularly overnight temperatures, are much warmer than Phoenix.  Most courses don't go completely dormant so overseeding isn't as important.  North of Jacksonville, resort areas like Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach, many courses do overseed because they do go completely dormant, but it's not a perfect solution because their big time of the year are the shoulder seasons, Oct-Nov and March - May and overseeding can interrupt that fall season and the grass could be checking out in the middle of your spring season.  With paint, it's not a problem.  Inland markets like Atlanta and Charlotte go dormant, but play drops by about 85% so the cost of overseed and maintaining makes it a questionable decision during the winter.  In fact, it's a terrible decision because everyone wants to play in April and May, right when the grass is checking out and the course looks terrible.  Even paint can slow the Bermuda from greening up, that's why we stop paint applications before February.  It starts to look a little blue, but it beats the alternative.
While people do like dormant bermuda greens, the fairways are can be awful unless you have perfect drainage and it would be a big risk to have fairways like that when the majority of your $ is coming in.

[A.G._Crockett]

1. Dormant Bermuda in the Southeast is fine early on in the cold weather while there is still at least some root action to soak up water, and fine if you are in the Sandhills or another similar area or on a specific course with great drainage, but I promise you that on clay-based courses it is pretty bad from here on out to the spring green up.  It just isn't much fun to try to hit irons off soggy Bermuda for three months or so, not to mention a well-struck drive plugging.  Add to that the landing areas on short holes becoming a checkerboard of divots, sand-filled or not, and the playing conditions are just not very good.

2. At the risk of overgeneralizing, the only courses in the Southeast that overseed anything anymore, other than perhaps the tees, are courses that are trying to improve curb appeal for real estate or resort traffic.  I've even seen courses that overseed the fairways on the holes by the roads around the course, but nowhere else. 


3. As mentioned by others, the big issue with overseeding, beyond the materials and labor costs involved, is the degree to which you slow down the Bermuda coming back in the spring while the overseed dies out, since it's the exact same weather that does both things.  So you are spending money to beautify and marginally improve playing conditions in the winter when temperature and rainfall alone decides how many rounds are played, to the detriment of spring conditions when traffic will increase.  That's a losing equation.

4.  One exception to this in the Southeast that goes back to the AZ resort-course model is that I have seen courses at the coast overseed their Champion Bermuda greens in the winter.  When mowed, these greens putt reasonably close to bent grass; they hold shots better than dormant Champion, and don't become too thin if the course gets a lot of traffic. 

[SB]

Based on the first paragraph in the OP:


Less golf in AZ would mean less demand for homes which would lead to less demand for potable water.


Do we actually take the rhetoric beyond one step anymore?

I spoke to a water attorney in Phoenix one time and he had an interesting take on it. 

He said the the agriculture which preceeded the homes used more water than the homes.  So, by converting farmland into houses, they are saving potable water.  And I'm fairly sure that included golf courses using potable water. 

[SB]

How much play does the Southeast big golf resorts, private clubs get in the winter time compared to the southwest where 85% of the play is from November till April. 


Cart traffic is obviously the main issue here as many courses in the desert are meant to be cartball courses compared to the southeast.  Could the dormant Bermuda handle 35K to 45K rounds of carts driving and beating down the fairways all winter long. 
Trust me I love the look of overseeded rye fairways just as much as the next guy, but I also find the pictures of Scottsdale National with their painted fairways and fast and firm conditions look amazingly fun too.  Will the general public buy into this idea out here in the southwest, or will it forever be expected to overseed?

I forgot to answer your actual questions:
How much play from Nov- April?  In south Florida, the same, 85% (certainly by dollars if not volume).  Coastal Southeast - call it 50%.  Interior southeast - about 15%.
Can dormant fairways handle 35,000 rounds.  No.  And if it doesn't drain well, hell no.
Will the general public buy in?  Colorwise yes, conditions no.  High end privates can do it because their customers are less seasonal, they have less volume (nothing like 35,000 rounds) and they probably have spent a fortune on drainage.  Being sand capped would be ideal.

[Matthew Petersen]

Other than Desert Forest, which was noted does overseed in the winter now, the only course in Phoenix I recall not overseeding was Vistal (originally Thunderbirds) in the last few years before they closed. It was clear they were doing it as a pure cost saving measure, not out of any agronomy plan or "down with brown" philosophy. Frankly, at that course, which was built largely against the side of South Mountain, the dormant grass didn't work very well. Balls basically just tended to run forever, until they found something, anything that would stop them. That was usually either a bunker, or a desert area on the low side of a hole.


But there are plenty of more parkland style courses around where I think dormant bermuda in the winter could work. As others have said, though, the winter is the time of year when courses here make their money and all are (probably rightly) afraid that if they don't overseed they will suffer.


The courses in the southeast that don't overseed tend to have much more of a year round season (not that the Carolinas aren't hot in July, but it's not Phoenix). One look at the rates for any Phoenix course today vs ... well, really any time April-October will tell you why the courses want to be green.

[Ran Morrissett]

A friend thought this link might be of interest:



https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/course-care/turf-tips/2019/how-to-establish-bluemuda-fairways.html