The golf season has not fully ramped up yet in the Northeast, but many courses are already seeing a lot of play. This is both good news and bad news for most facilities. The good news is courses remain busy, with some seeing golf rounds continue to tick up year over year. The bad news, especially for courses with small greens and tees, is the increased traffic is responsible for weak grass as the season goes on. For many, this has demonstrated a need for larger greens.
Putting greens often shrink over time. Maintaining the perfect cleanup pass is difficult in any circumstance, but even more so as courses change equipment, team members and superintendents. You can probably find aerial photos showing original green shapes and sizes and compare them to what you have today, or probe the soil to find the edge of original greens mix. Don’t be surprised if your greens have gotten quite a bit smaller, even if your course isn’t that old.
The easiest way to fix putting green shrinkage is to identify where the original green perimeter was and slowly mow the existing collar or surrounds back to putting green height. This works best if the soil profile in that area still matches the putting green and the grasses surrounding the green are the same as the green itself.
If the original putting green margins are not large enough to meet your needs, you may need to make more-extensive adjustments. A few courses I’ve been on this spring have large areas around their greens that were previously rough and have been mowed to fairway height that they now are converting to putting surface. Since the soil profile under these areas is most likely native soil, they will require either very aggressive cultivation and topdressing, or excavation and replacement with new rootzone mix to function properly as part of the putting surface.
If you plan to add new mix, it is important to send a sample of your current mix to a lab for analysis. Courses with push-up greens will usually have anywhere from 2 to 6 inches of a sandy soil mixture above native soils from years of repeated cultivation and topdressing. This is the depth that affects turf health and quality the most, and what you want to test. Use the lab results to purchase a new mix for the expansion areas that closely matches what you currently have.
Spring is a difficult time to do this work because keeping new putting green turf alive during the heat of summer is tricky. Therefore, use this spring to plan for expansions and get your testing done, but don’t start lowering the height of cut or regrassing areas before August. Green expansions are a good fall project that can usually be done in-house, especially if you are only lowering the height of cut and perhaps performing aggressive aeration and topdressing. Even if the work can be done in-house, it’s a good idea to have a golf course architect consult on any significant putting green expansions to make sure they meet your design and maintenance goals.
Clearly, golfers are eager to come back to the course this year. It is important to plan for that by continuing to expand greens and tees wherever possible to spread traffic and wear. Moreover, putting green expansions provide the opportunity for more hole locations if done right. This adds to golfer enjoyment because they get a new look on the same hole they’ve played many times. For assistance with planning your putting green expansion project, reach out to your regional USGA agronomist.
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