After a summer of nearly no rain last year and a dry start in many areas this year, the Northeast has seen several inches of rain recently, with more in the forecast. The one commonality on my recent USGA Course Consulting Service visits has been wet, soggy conditions and excessive grass clippings.
Wet conditions are in the hands of Mother Nature and your course’s drainage infrastructure. When it rains as much as it has recently, there is no way around it – playing surfaces are going to be wet and soft. But concerns about soft playing conditions haven’t come up as much as the issue of excessive grass clippings in the rough and fairways. Many courses were forced to take multiple days off from mowing due to the rain, which means when they were finally able to mow again, the grass was a lot taller than normal.
The consequence of that is too much grass being cut and too many clippings left behind. If excessive clippings are affecting maintenance or play, there are things that can be done if your course has the time, equipment and labor available. For example, a turbine blower is what is most often used to disperse clippings in the rough and fairways. Many courses have a tow-behind turbine blower that attaches to the back of a utility cart and a staff member can be assigned to follow mowing operations and blow away any excess clippings. A step up from that is a larger PTO-driven turbine or conventional blower behind a tractor. Mowing later in the day once turf is dry can help reduce clumps of clippings but this isn’t always practical given the amount of play courses are getting. Exploring different mower blades is an option in the rough and dragging the dew off fairways before mowing can also help minimize the accumulation of clippings.
While many courses have one or more of these options available, they don’t always have the labor to use them every day or they don’t have enough clipping control measures to keep up and clean the course before play. With as much rain as the region has received, patience is important. The maintenance team is working on the clippings as fast as they can but from what I’ve seen, there are a lot of them to clean up. If it keeps raining, the clippings will keep coming.
Northeast Region Agronomists
Darin Bevard, senior director, Championship Agronomy – dbevard@usga.org
Elliott L. Dowling, regional director, East Region – edowling@usga.org
Brian Gietka, agronomist – bgietka@usga.org