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Key Takeaways:

  • Many golf courses maintain a considerable acreage of mown and irrigated turf that experiences very little play.
  • Turf reduction offers many potential benefits, but alternative landscape treatments can create playability and maintenance issues.
  • Location is a critical factor in the success of turf reduction areas.
  • The USGA Green Section is collaborating with Arccos to use their shot location data to help golf courses with turf reduction plans.
  • This approach provides an objective method for identifying and evaluating potential areas for turf reduction, and an effective way to illustrate different options.

Many golf courses maintain a considerable acreage of irrigated, regularly mown turf that experiences very little play. These underused spaces are not necessarily a problem, but they do offer opportunities to make potentially valuable changes in how a course is maintained with very little impact on play. Reducing the acreage of irrigated turf can save inputs like water, mowing time, fuel and pesticides. There can be strategic, aesthetic and environmental benefits that come with turf reduction as well. However, experience shows that turf reduction areas are not necessarily low maintenance and they can lead to a significant amount of discontent among golfers when expectations don’t align with reality.

A key factor in maximizing the benefits of turf reduction and minimizing the potential downsides is location, location, location. When turf reduction areas are farther out of play, they receive less scrutiny from golfers and typically require less inputs and maintenance time. On the other hand, when these areas are in high-traffic, high-visibility locations, golfer expectations for how they are maintained increase. Finding the best target areas for turf reduction is not always easy, especially when relying on a subjective process that involves a lot of “feel” and anecdotal observations. Having a more objective and accurate understanding of how play is distributed across a golf course makes it much easier to identify areas for turf reduction that offer the most benefits with the least impact on play. 

At the USGA Green Section, we are strong believers in the value of collecting data and presenting it visually to facilitate analysis and communication. Our DEACON® management system is a great example. Arccos is a company that provides golfers with shot tracking equipment and software that is designed to help them analyze and improve their games. Users attach a small device to each of their clubs or carry a single tracker that records where they hit each shot automatically. The Arccos dataset for each course can also be a valuable tool for guiding turf reduction because it contains precise shot location information from a wide range of golfers over numerous rounds. The USGA Green Section and Arccos collaborated on developing a system for mapping shot data and analyzing it to help courses identify opportunities for turf reduction.

The first step in the process is to check the dataset for a particular course to see how many players and rounds are in the system, and the range of skill levels in that group. Every golf course has a different number of Arccos users that have played it. The courses we have worked with range from about 90-160 different golfers in their dataset, with the total number of rounds for each group of players at a given course ranging from approximately 600 to more than 2,000. The data also contains information about the golfers’ skill levels. Players in the datasets we have worked with average around a 14.0 Handicap Index® with a range from below scratch to above 40. We have not yet encountered a course with a dataset that we felt was insufficient in number of players/rounds or distribution of skill levels to perform a useful analysis, but making this determination is not an exact science. The fundamental question is whether using the data represents a meaningful improvement over what can be obtained through field observation and anecdotal discussion. Thus far, we feel comfortable that the cases we have encountered exceed that threshold. 

If a course decides to move forward with the analysis after reviewing the dataset with Green Section staff, we work with Arccos and a mapping specialist with expertise in golf course architecture to accurately plot the shot data over an aerial image of the course. This creates a map with thousands of little dots where each shot in the dataset was hit from. The patterns of play on each hole are immediately apparent. From that point, we can analyze the information in several different ways depending on the goals of the course.

Some courses are interested in understanding their turf reduction potential at various levels of impact on play. For example, they may want to know how much irrigated turf can be removed while affecting no more than 5% of tee-to-green shots in the dataset. We do not include putts in the analysis because putting would not be affected by any normal turf reduction scenarios. The mapping specialist works with Green Section experts to outline and measure potential areas for turf reduction that follow reasonable principles of golf course design and maintenance while staying below the threshold level of shots included in those areas. This approach can be tailored to different limits for shots affected, which makes it easy for people reviewing the analysis to visually compare and choose between options. 

Another approach is to start with a goal for total turf reduction and find target areas that achieve that outcome with the least possible impact on play. For example, if a course wanted to eliminate 20 acres of irrigated turf to comply with new water restrictions, we would be able to identify areas that would reach that goal with the lowest percentage of shots affected.

You can also use this system to evaluate existing turf reduction plans for their potential impact on play, and to identify areas where the plan could be refined to achieve the desired outcome. This information can also be helpful for explaining a turf reduction plan to golfers in an easy-to-understand way, and building support for the plan if necessary.

A useful feature of this system is being able to easily iterate different scenarios until a solution is found that meets a course’s goals. For example, if affecting no more than 5% of tee-to-green shots doesn’t reach the desired level of turf reduction, it’s easy to identify additional areas for turf reduction that minimize the additional impact on play. Similarly, if a particular percentage of shots affected looks like it involves too much turf reduction, it’s easy to shrink the target areas to reach a preferred outcome. The ability to make these adjustments based on objective criteria adds confidence to the normal process of adjusting a turf reduction proposal.

An important caveat is that this system does not create a final turf reduction plan. It provides an evaluation and illustration of turf reduction potential at varying impacts on play. We recommend working with the superintendent, a golf course architect, key decision-makers at the facility, and other relevant experts to refine the exact size and location of turf reduction areas so they fit the specific characteristics and requirements of the course. Key considerations include the location of sprinkler heads, architectural and aesthetic impacts, golfer traffic patterns, the opinions of adjacent property owners, maintenance requirements of the alternative landscape treatment, and much more. Accounting for these factors is a critical part of creating a successful turf reduction plan. 

Our experience developing and working with this system has demonstrated its effectiveness in identifying target areas for turf reduction and visually explaining why certain parts of a course might be a better choice for turf reduction than others. It has also been surprising to see how much mown and irrigated turf acreage on some golf courses goes mostly unused – even on relatively compact properties. Amount of use is not the sole criteria for deciding whether to maintain an area as irrigated turf, but it should be an important consideration, especially if resources are scarce and high-use playing areas would benefit from additional staff time or inputs. Turf reduction has tremendous potential to help golf courses conserve or optimize maintenance resources, but it can create problems that discourage courses from pursuing or fully achieving the benefits. Using objective data about how golfers play a particular course highlights the opportunities turf reduction may present and hopefully allows more courses to optimize how they maintain different parts of their property.

For more information about this system, email George Waters (gwaters@usga.org) or reach out to your regional USGA agronomist.