In many parts of the Southwest, courses may spend $1 million or more on their annual water bill and it’s not uncommon for regulators to impose water restrictions of 40% or more depending on water storage concerns and location. In response to these challenges, some golf courses have been forced to make difficult decisions around their water use. Forgoing overseeding is a surefire way to save water without increasing costs or undergoing an expensive course renovation. As the number of courses eliminating overseeding continues to grow, a question has come up about golfer and cart traffic during the winter months. Namely, should courses enforce frost delays on non-overseeded fairways?
The answer to this question is trickier than it appears. Golfers may think “It’s dormant bermudagrass, what’s the big deal, let’s go play golf!” To some extent, that perception is correct. When bermudagrass is dormant, golf cart traffic during frost conditions will likely not cause more damage than under non-frost conditions. However, if the bermudagrass is not fully dormant, will golf carts cause more damage during a frosty morning? Perhaps, but the difference will be minimal.
With that in mind, back to the original question: Should non-overseeded courses enforce frost delays? Any concentrated golfer or maintenance traffic will damage bermudagrass, especially during the fall, winter and early spring when the bermudagrass is slowly growing, if at all. Therefore, restricting golf carts to paths or rough will only help preserve the bermudagrass in fairways. If courses can withhold traffic during frost, that means less damage overall. Additionally, a heavy frost can cause slippery conditions and navigating the course on foot or in a cart may be challenging and even dangerous. Enforcing frost delays is a policy that is good for golf course conditioning and also safer for golfers.
However, for some courses the potential lost revenue from delaying play or limiting golf cart access may outweigh the benefits in course conditions from enforcing frost delays. Each course may handle the situation a bit differently. In a recent informal survey of courses that do not overseed fairways, some put a premium on filling the tee sheet and do not enforce any type of tee time delay under frost, while others continue to enforce a frost delay policy as they did when they were overseeding. Some use a hybrid approach, with no restrictions on walking golfers and carts restricted to roughs when under frost. In another example, if the frost delay is longer than one hour the course will implement a shotgun start for the first few holes once the frost lifts.
The overarching message is that any type of concentrated traffic on slowly growing or dormant bermudagrass will cause damage and there will be no significant recovery until the early spring when day length and soil temperatures increase. It will be up to each course to weigh the consequences of traffic on the non-overseeded bermudagrass versus the importance of filling up the tee sheet.
West Region Agronomists:
Brian Whitlark, regional director – bwhitlark@usga.org
Cory Isom, agronomist – cisom@usga.org