I have a maintenance question

[Matt_Cohn]

Naturally, clubs with higher maintenance budgets and larger staffs tend to have more pristine conditions. Some of this is obvious. With a larger staff you can have people edge and rake bunkers by hand, fill divots with sand, repair ball marks, patch bad areas on greens, pull weeds, and so on.


But take fairways, for example. How exactly do budget and staff help maintain pristine, monoculture fairways? What do you do with a fairway besides water it, mow it, and punch and sand it a couple times a year? How does money and manpower stop 5 other kinds of grasses from growing in? Are they applying more chemicals? Pulling invasive sprigs by hand?


More generally—what do clubs with big staffs and budgets actually do with those people and that money to maintain the general playing areas in better condition?

[Tom_Doak]

But take fairways, for example. How exactly do budget and staff help maintain pristine, monoculture fairways? What do you do with a fairway besides water it, mow it, and punch and sand it a couple times a year? How does money and manpower stop 5 other kinds of grasses from growing in? Are they applying more chemicals? Pulling invasive sprigs by hand?

More water.  More fertilizer.  More chemicals.  Maybe some growth regulator to slow growth, although I think that's used more on the greens than the fairways.


The chemical budget for cool season grasses can be a LOT if you are trying to keep up with the other clubs in Westchester County (NY) or Chicago.

[Rob Marshall]

We put growth regulator on the greens and the bunker faces.


We would be on the lower private club budget side. Our greens are great. Fairways good. What we lose out on with our lower budget is maintenance on the bunkers and rough around the bunkers. Cutting out goat paths and fly mowing don’t get done as often as they should. 


Flat bottom bunkers imo don’t save on maintenance.

[jeffwarne]

Naturally, clubs with higher maintenance budgets and larger staffs tend to have more pristine conditions. Some of this is obvious. With a larger staff you can have people edge and rake bunkers by hand, fill divots with sand, repair ball marks, patch bad areas on greens, pull weeds, and so on.


But take fairways, for example. How exactly do budget and staff help maintain pristine, monoculture fairways? What do you do with a fairway besides water it, mow it, and punch and sand it a couple times a year? How does money and manpower stop 5 other kinds of grasses from growing in? Are they applying more chemicals? Pulling invasive sprigs by hand?


More generally—what do clubs with big staffs and budgets actually do with those people and that money to maintain the general playing areas in better condition?

I play a lot of golf on pristine courses in the NY area, but also a lot of golf on super low budget public courses.
I seriously can't remember a bad lie on the low end courses-in fact FAR more bad lies on high ends(super tight, and/or into grain super low HOC fairways, and divot collection area where you play out of sanded divots-far more difficult than playing out of an unsanded divot-which tend to be more scattered when fairway isn't a modern HOC/speed)

[Thomas Dai]

Expectations and 80-20 rule are aspects worth consideration.
Atb

[Rob Marshall]

Naturally, clubs with higher maintenance budgets and larger staffs tend to have more pristine conditions. Some of this is obvious. With a larger staff you can have people edge and rake bunkers by hand, fill divots with sand, repair ball marks, patch bad areas on greens, pull weeds, and so on.


But take fairways, for example. How exactly do budget and staff help maintain pristine, monoculture fairways? What do you do with a fairway besides water it, mow it, and punch and sand it a couple times a year? How does money and manpower stop 5 other kinds of grasses from growing in? Are they applying more chemicals? Pulling invasive sprigs by hand?


More generally—what do clubs with big staffs and budgets actually do with those people and that money to maintain the general playing areas in better condition?

I play a lot of golf on pristine courses in the NY area, but also a lot of golf on super low budget public courses.
I seriously can't remember a bad lie on the low end courses-in fact FAR more bad lies on high ends(super tight, and/or into grain super low HOC fairways, and divot collection area where you play out of sanded divots-far more difficult than playing out of an unsanded divot)

Should divots be GUR?

[Tom Bacsanyi]

But take fairways, for example. How exactly do budget and staff help maintain pristine, monoculture fairways? What do you do with a fairway besides water it, mow it, and punch and sand it a couple times a year? How does money and manpower stop 5 other kinds of grasses from growing in? Are they applying more chemicals? Pulling invasive sprigs by hand?

More water.  More fertilizer.  More chemicals.  Maybe some growth regulator to slow growth, although I think that's used more on the greens than the fairways.


The chemical budget for cool season grasses can be a LOT if you are trying to keep up with the other clubs in Westchester County (NY) or Chicago.

I'd push back on simply "more" of those things and say "more frequent" instead. A higher end course might end up spending more time watering fairways but less overall volume of water, with much more supplemental hand watering of perennial dry spots, whereas a lower budget course would likely never send hose guys out on fairways and thus would have to water more via the overhead system and just deal with wet/dry spots. Similarly, a higher budget course would fertilize less overall in terms of overall lbs. of N, but more frequently and via a sprayer, whereas a lower budget course might do big granular apps less frequently and deal with big flushes of growth. When you start talking about bentgrass fairways mowed real low it really isn't far off of putting greens as far as fertility, cultural, chemical, and irrigation requirements.


At the course I worked at here in the rocky mountains a typical 2nd job was to drag hose around fairways, as we tried to keep things firm and water as little as possible via the irrigation system at night. Challenging, since you might literally not get a drop of rain in the summer months.


On the question of "5 different types of grasses", monostands of cool season grasses are generally very rare (unless the course is brand new or recently renovated), especially in the fairways and rough. Frequent mowing and PGR applications on a schedule can make a "Heinz 57" polystand look more uniform.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:


Thanks for the corrections.

On the question of "5 different types of grasses", monostands of cool season grasses are generally very rare (unless the course is brand new or recently renovated), especially in the fairways and rough. Frequent mowing and PGR applications on a schedule can make a "Heinz 57" polystand look more uniform.

This is a particularly good point on a part of the topic I missed.  The idea that every fairway should be a monostand is just a spoiled American mindset.  That sort of uniformity doesn't exist in nature, and the diversity doesn't necessarily affect the quality of the playing surface . . . but spoiled members still complain that it doesn't look perfect, and superintendents are then required to address it as a problem, even when it's not.

[Ira Fishman]

Our newish Superintendent has found 10 different strands on our circa 1928 course. He does a great job keeping the surfaces really good for playing. Good but not great budget for our area. My wife has been on the Green Committee for several years; not very many complaints thankfully from the membership.


He also found at least three different subsurfaces for the greens!