It is crowded wherever you go, there is no more college football, and the West Coast swing of the PGA tour is underway. In Florida, these are often indicators that the winter golf season is here. For the next three to four months, the tee sheets at golf courses will be filled with daily play, weekly association events, Member-Guest, and course championship tournaments.
During TAS visits conducted during the first weeks of January, in general, appropriate and good quality overall course conditioning has been being provided. It should be pointed out, however, that it has only been a couple of months since Hurricane Wilma roared across South Florida, and thus at many courses in its path, clean-up and recovery in perimeter areas is still underway.
With hosting peak winter season play, accomplishment of routine management programs and practices, and minimizing deterioration in course quality are challenges faced at most courses. Golfer demands for premium quality course conditioning require intensive and timely ongoing management. This is especially true with putting greens; and practices such as regular, light topdressing to provide a consistent, smooth, true ball roll and medium to fast putting speeds, are necessary. Also, there is a progressive buildup in soil compaction, which in turn limits moisture and oxygen infiltration. Thus, periodic non-disruptive aeration treatments during the fall, winter, and spring months are recommended.
While I fully understand and appreciate the need to accommodate play demands, golfers also need to understand that the course maintenance staff needs to be allowed the time to conduct these practices. While the ideal is to keep the course closed one full day each week for maintenance, this is not an option at many facilities. There has been a very good trend underway of one-half day closures at least once per week or every other week. Another strategy that is sometimes used is to block out tee times for an hour or two so that a gap in play is created and work can be accomplished more efficiently without having to constantly stop and start for golfers.
Remember, the heaviest play is being hosted when the base turf is not actively growing. While wintertime temperatures in South Florida are not sufficiently cold enough to result in bermudagrass or Seashore paspalum going fully dormant and off-color, growth activity does drastically slow down for two to four months. Thus, producing a recovery response from traffic and wear damage is simply not possible, regardless of inputs. So far this winter, mild temperatures have prevailed, and there have not been a lot of complaints about "no grass" on fairways and a loss of definition because the turf has been beat down by cart traffic. Yet, we still have at least six to eight weeks of winter remaining. Thus, aggressive traffic management must be employed to minimize typical wintertime course deterioration. Along with directional control devices put into place before the turf becomes worn out, it is generally best to have multiple cart usage policies that distribute traffic over as much area as possible. Until environmental conditions are favorable to the resumption of sustained active turf growth, survival is the key word at most Florida golf courses.
There are some exciting new features on the USGA Web site. There are currently two Windows Media educational video clips on, "Why Aerating A Course is Vital", and "The Necessity of Hand-Watering Greens". Additional turfgrass animations can be found on the following topics:
Repairing Ballmarks
Why Bunkers are Not Consistent
Bunker Etiquette
Why Aerate Greens
Etiquette Toward Maintenance Personnel
Watering for Healthy Turf
Selecting Hole Locations
Changing a Hole Location
Trees on the Golf Course
Divot Repair Etiquette
Use of the Stimpmeter
Golf Cart Etiquette
Frost Issues
Making A Great Putting Green Surface
TV Golf Versus Daily Play
The animations can be found at: http://www.usga.org/turf/articles/educational_video_clips.html or at the bottom of the USGA home page in the bulleted list (www.usga.org)
These educational clips and turfgrass animations are excellent tools to share with your staff, committees and golfers.
Source: John Foy, jfoy@usga.org or 772-546-2620
