When I make USGA Course Consulting Service visits at golf courses around the country, golfers and green committee members often have questions like: “Why are the greens at our course struggling while the course down the road is fine?” or “Why does the course next door have firmer fairways than ours?” When these questions come up, I remind people that golf courses can have many fundamental differences that influence playability and presentation – even if the courses are right across the fence from each other. While there are lessons courses can learn from their neighbors, it’s important to remember that some amount of variety is an inevitable (and I would say enjoyable) part of playing different courses. Let’s take a look at some of the key reasons for these differences.
Grass type
Golf courses don’t use the same grasses, and different grass species (or even different varieties of the same species) behave differently and require unique management programs. Grasses have different tolerances for extreme temperatures, traffic and pests. They have different water and fertilizer requirements, some have a dense, upright canopy while others grow more horizontally, and the list goes on. Variation among grasses is often a reason why your golf course might be playing differently than one five minutes down the road at certain times of the year.
Construction and infrastructure
Golf courses that are built differently play differently – especially when the weather gets tough. A “push up” putting green built from native soil with no subsurface drainage will not perform the same way after rainy weather as a putting green built with a sand-based rootzone and an extensive drainage system. A golf course with a 30-year-old, single-row irrigation system won’t handle drought in the same way as one that has full coverage from a brand-new system. Fairway drainage, fans around pocketed greens, and many other important infrastructure differences are often unknown or overlooked when golfers wonder about differences in playing conditions.
Growing environments
The quality of the growing environment has a great deal to do with turfgrass quality and playability. Courses that are heavily treed often have turf issues related to shade, limited air movement and root competition. A golf course that sits on a hill instead of in a valley, or on a south-facing slope rather than a north-facing one, can be exposed to additional sun and wind that changes watering requirements and makes it more vulnerable to certain types of damage. Soil types can also vary significantly from one property to the next, and golf courses with heavier soils will not drain as well as those with sandy or gravelly soils.
Number of rounds
The number of rounds played is a big factor in playing conditions and management practices. The higher the number of annual rounds, the more traffic stress becomes an issue. To keep the grass healthy under the added stress, conditioning often cannot be pushed as hard as may be possible at a course with fewer rounds and less traffic. Also consider the usage of carts on the golf course. If a course has a high number of rounds played with carts, it can’t be as dry as a course that has very few or no cart rounds because the turf needs more moisture in the soil to recover from the additional traffic.
Budget and facility goals
The maintenance budget for a golf course obviously affects conditioning. More staff and resources make it possible to manage moisture more precisely, mow the playing surfaces more often, improve growing environments and infrastructure, and perform beneficial but expensive practices like topdressing and aeration more frequently and on more areas of the course. Courses with more resources often have a more comprehensive spray program to control pests, they can spend more time managing naturalized areas, and they can perform targeted maintenance practices like vertical mowing on greens and approaches to optimize playability.
The goals and intentions of a facility also drive conditioning. One course may place a premium on firm and fast conditions, while another course may opt for more-receptive surfaces that are preferred by their customers. Both philosophies are completely justified, it’s just important to recognize that differences in the intended audience and overall goals of the facility will create differences in how courses look and play.
Key takeaways
While golfers can see and experience the differences in playing conditions between courses, the reasons behind them are usually not as obvious. We don’t see underground infrastructure when playing a round, and golfers don’t typically know the maintenance budget and capital investments that go into a course each year, but those and many other factors have a big impact on how a course looks and plays. It’s natural to be curious about differences between nearby courses, but don’t let comparison be the thief of joy. Golf courses are all different, there are good reasons why, and those differences don’t mean you won’t have a great time playing.