For courses that are lucky enough to enjoy golf throughout the winter, there are many things to consider to ensure that turf remains in excellent condition leading into the next growing season. This is especially true for courses with warm-season grasses, as they tend to be located in areas with lots of winter play. For these folks, dormancy is often a reality and managing cart traffic is a major subject to consider.
It is well documented that cart traffic on dormant warm-season turf can have a negative impact on turf quality the following growing season. The turf is being subjected to compaction and mechanical wear without having the means to recover. To combat this, many courses keep carts on paths more often during winter, or they take steps to promote walking. Keeping carts on paths as much as possible during dormancy is great news for most of the golf course, but it can also lead to increased damage around the edges of the cart paths.
With little to no turf recovery and longer periods of saturated soil after rain during the winter, compaction, ruts and bare spots along paths are common issues. Weeds that thrive in compacted environments – like goosegrass – have a competitive advantage over the desired turfgrass in these situations and often fill the gaps.
Traffic management strategies like the use of signs, ropes and stakes are not feasible all along the cart path network, but these tactics can be effectively employed in places where carts tend to meander onto the turf. Areas near curves and turns in the path are excellent targets for traffic control strategies. If you’ve seen bare spots along a path in previous years, that is a helpful predictor of where some additional signage or stakes would be beneficial.
The fruit of this labor will not necessarily be seen immediately, but you can expect fewer bare areas and weed encroachment along paths in the spring. Investing time and resources now to prevent damage through the winter will help you avoid remediating problems in the spring. If you have any questions about how to manage traffic on dormant turf at your golf course, please reach out to your local USGA agronomist.
Central Region Agronomists:
Zach Nicoludis, regional director, Central Region – znicoludis@usga.org
Tom Gould, agronomist – tgould@usga.org