Having spent two weeks at Pebble Beach preparing for the U.S. Women’s Open, I picked up some pointers on how to prepare golf course putting greens for a major championship. Since Pebble Beach Golf Links is an extremely busy course with a fully booked tee sheet, timing is critical when it comes to championship preparation. Normal play lasted through the Saturday before the championship started and the first official practice day was on Monday prior to the Thursday start. This meant that championship preparation had to start Saturday evening and the greens had to be “close” by Monday morning to give players a good idea of what to expect during the championship.
The healthy Poa annua putting greens were calibrated for resort play prior to the championship, so Pebble Beach’s superintendent Bubba Wright had to find a way to gain about two feet of green speed in just a few days. A moderate verticutting was performed the week before the championship and some aggressive grooming was also done before practice rounds started to thin out the dense grass. Besides these cultural practices and an application of trinexapac-ethyl, putting green heights were lowered in stages down to 0.100 inch. This in combination with mowing and rolling greens in the morning and again at night quickly brought putting green speeds into the desired range. With a typical decline of about 6 inches in green speed during the day, we wanted to have Stimpmeter readings a little faster in the morning to account for the natural decline. Drying the putting greens down to around 10% volumetric water content and double cutting helped firm them up and increase speed.
Like magic, we hit our numbers during the practice rounds and were then thrown a curveball by Mother Nature when 20-30 mph winds were expected for Friday through Sunday of the championship. This was further complicated by a forecast of increased sunshine and having several putting greens that were fully exposed to the wind off the Pacific Ocean. All of a sudden, we had to hit the brakes to ensure that the putting greens were receptive enough to hold good golf shots and balls would not move on their own in the wind. To do this we increased hand watering in key areas. We also had to determine if certain greens needed to be rolled or not, since we were getting an increase in speed of about a foot after a single roll. We followed behind the mowers in the morning checking each green individually to make sure we did not exceed the target speed and firmness.
The moral of the story is that it takes practice, skill and talented individuals to provide championship playing conditions without going over the edge and making the putting greens unplayable. In the end we had great conditions for the U.S. Women’s Open and a very worthy champion was crowned in Allisen Corpuz.
Southeast Region Agronomists:
Chris Hartwiger, director, Agronomy – chartwiger@usga.org
Jordan Booth, Ph.D., director, USGA Course Consulting Service – jbooth@usga.org
John Rowland, Ph.D., agronomist – jrowland@usga.org
Chris Neff, agronomist – cneff@usga.org