Golf has been played on grass for more than 500 years, but the grass you play on today is far superior to the grass your grandparents or even your parents played on.
Today, backed by more than 100 years of research, there are new grasses that use less water, can be mowed shorter and can tolerate traffic, disease and insect pressure far better than their predecessors. Since 1921, the USGA has cooperated with the USDA and land-grant universities to develop improved grasses for golf, but golf is not the only beneficiary – professional football, baseball, soccer and even polo fields have adopted these grasses as well.
Your parents’ grass
The first improved grass variety developed with USGA funding was released in the 1940s. About 20 years later, USGA funding helped produce a bermudagrass called Tifway 419 at the University of Georgia. Tifway 419 has been the gold standard of bermudagrasses for many years and is still widely used on golf courses and on the fields of NFL teams such as the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Arizona Cardinals.
Generation Z takes over
Through USGA-supported research, new “Generation Z” grasses – i.e., those released from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, are showing significant improvements over older generations. Latitude 36 and Northbridge bermudagrasses were released from Oklahoma State University in 2010 and are being utilized in areas where warm-season grass was never even considered, such as on the practice field for the Cincinnati Bengals. The use of Latitude 36 has expanded to more teams such as the Washington Redskins, Carolina Panthers, Philadelphia Eagles, Tennessee Titans, Kansas City Chiefs and the Cleveland Browns.
Recent research at the University of Tennessee revealed that Northbridge exhibited improved wear-tolerance when compared to Latitude 36 and as such, the Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Baltimore Ravens and Washington Redskins have switched to Northbridge. If you follow Major League Soccer, you will see Latitude 36 used on the home fields of Los Angeles FC, Orlando City, and even the Columbus Crew in Columbus, Ohio.
The USGA has supported turf breeding efforts at the University of Georgia since 1946, and this university recently released TifTuf™ bermudagrass. TifTuf can be managed to use 30 percent less water than Tifway 419. Additionally, TifTuf is greener than Tifway 419 and holds up better to traffic. Another new grass released last year from Oklahoma State University is Tahoma 31. Wear studies at University of Tennessee demonstrated that this new grass has superior wear tolerance to Latitude 36 and Northbridge, and similar wear tolerance to TifTuf. Tahoma 31 also has improved cold tolerance when compared to all other vegetative bermudagrasses and therefore may be adopted at latitudes farther north than bermudagrasses are currently used.
Future generations
Turf breeding efforts continue throughout the U.S. and there is huge potential for new grasses that use less water, require less inputs and can remain green and recover from traffic all year round. The USGA is supporting the turf breeding program at the University of California Riverside to develop a warm-season grass – such as bermudagrass, zoysiagrass or kikuyugrass – that has excellent drought tolerance and can remain green and recover from traffic during the winter months. Such a development could eliminate overseeding with cool-season grasses in the southern California desert and Arizona and benefit the golf industry and sports turf managers across the southern U.S.