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Sweetens Cove Golf Club is a popular 9-hole course in eastern Tennessee that has built something of a cult following since it opened in 2014. Golf is played there throughout the year and like most other courses, the past several years have been extremely busy. The 2024 golf calendar was sold out before the year even started, but a couple of weeks in January turned all those plans upside down.

Heavy rain followed by extreme cold and high winds caused such extensive winter injury on the bermudagrass greens and fairways that the course had to be closed for much of the spring and the entire summer. Bermudagrass thrives in the hot, humid summers at Sweetens Cove and normally makes it through the mild winters with no issues. However, bermudagrass is vulnerable to subfreezing temperatures. In the middle of January, temperatures in the valley where Sweetens Cove is located dipped to minus 10 F, or perhaps even lower.

“Really it was a perfect storm,” said golf course superintendent Chris Settles. “We had a very dry and busy fall and early winter so the turf was weak going into dormancy and then we had the extreme cold along with hard winds.”

The team at Sweetens Cove managed to get the greens covered before the deep freeze arrived, but a single layer of covers was no match for the cold and wind. The greens remained covered for almost two weeks and the fairways looked like skating rinks after being coated by a wintery mix and frozen over. The weather broke eventually, but the damage had been done.

“When we first took the covers off, you couldn’t really tell anything had happened, but by about the middle of February things started looking off,” said Settles.

One of the designers of Sweetens Cove, Rob Collins, lives in the area and plays an active role in the ongoing management of the course. He didn’t like what he saw on the greens shortly after the cold snap. “The color just didn’t look right,” said Collins. “There was a rippled appearance to the discoloration that looked like the high winds had forced cold air under the covers.”

In March, Settles brought in some turf plugs from areas that looked damaged and warmed them up under a grow light to see if they would recover, but they wouldn’t start growing.
 

Sweetens Cove ended up losing more than half of their putting green turf and about 30% of the fairway area. As the extent of the damage became clear, everyone realized that recovery was not going to be a fast process. Something would have to be done about golf bookings for at least the next several months.

“The course was obviously not going to play well for a while,” said Collins, “so we made the difficult decision to close for the summer and get everything fixed. That was really disappointing for our customers and tough financially for the course, but it was the only thing we could do.”

Once the course closed in May, the recovery work began. The greens were double aerified and verticut multiple times to prepare for new ‘MiniVerde’ bermudagrass sprigs. This is the same grass that was on the greens before the damage occurred, so the newly planted turf would match with any areas that hadn’t died over the winter.

The fairways were fraze mowed before being regrassed with a combination of sprigs and sod. Fraze mowing is an aggressive process that strips off the top layer of grass and organic material. It’s not something courses can do on a regular basis because it’s so disruptive, but it was a great way to prepare the fairways for new grass and to remove a bunch of the soft organic material that had accumulated since the course opened.

They used ‘NorthBridge’ bermudagrass to replant the fairways, it is a cold-tolerant variety that was developed through USGA-funded research. They chose ‘NorthBridge’ because of its playing quality, aggressive growth, and natural cold tolerance that would add a measure of protection against future issues. “No bermudagrass is immune to low-temperature injury, but some varieties are more cold-tolerant than others,” said Jordan Booth, Ph.D., senior director of the USGA’s Course Consulting Service. “The hard work of turfgrass breeders over the past several decades has given us bermudagrass varieties with improved cold tolerance that can be used with less risk in cooler climates.”
 

With new turf planted on the greens and fairways by early June, everyone at Sweetens Cove was crossing their fingers for good growing weather to accelerate establishment. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had another curveball in store. “The day after we sprigged the greens we got half an inch of rain, and then it didn’t rain again for almost two months,” said Settles. That kind of drought is not what you want with newly planted grass.

“We spent some money upgrading the irrigation system over the past couple of years and put it to the test this summer,” said Settles. “Thankfully, we made it through and everything grew in well.” Sweetens Cove reopened on September 1, much to the delight of golfers and everyone associated with the course.

“I can’t say enough about the hard work that Chris Settles, Jon Rife, Larry Erickson and our entire maintenance crew put in to get the course replanted and grown-in this summer,” said Collins. “Without their tireless efforts we wouldn’t be open today.”

In many ways, the winter damage was a product of bad luck, but there were lessons learned that will help Sweetens Cove and other courses in similar climates reduce their risk in the future. “We bought a second set of covers,” said Settles. “The turf on the greens was fine where the covers overlapped at the seams, so that shows how important an extra layer of protection can be in an extreme situation.”

“We’re also going to change how we manage play going into winter,” said Collins. “We’ve been playing so much golf out there these past few years and putting a lot of cart traffic on the course. We’re going to be more protective with our cart policy, not just with the new turf this year, but into the future.”

“Healthy turf heading into the fall and winter is critical for having the best chance of surviving winter,” said Booth. “Raising mowing heights, proper water management and using protective covers on putting greens are all effective strategies to reduce the risk of winter injury on bermudagrass.”
 

All golf courses lose some grass from time to time – that is the reality of managing a natural surface in an unpredictable environment. However, the damage is usually minor enough that repairs can be made without too much disruption. What happened at Sweetens Cove this winter was truly a worst-case scenario that had significant impacts on play and the overall business. This situation reminds us that extreme weather is always a possibility, and just because something has never happened before doesn’t mean it won’t occur in the near future. It’s always a good idea for courses to assess their risks and look for opportunities to prepare. Investments in course infrastructure or protective measures can prevent major problems down the road. You never know when the “perfect storm” will hit.

Images courtesy of Sweetens Cove Golf Club