Wet areas; irrigation, rain, or groundwater?

The modern American golf course has an irrigation system composed of hundreds of sprinkler heads, computer controllers and pump stations capable of pushing millions of gallons of water to irrigate the golf course.  The purpose of the irrigation system is to supplement natural rainfall in order to keep the turfgrass plant healthy. When the game of golf evolved in Scotland it was played on fescue in seaside settings on sandy well drained soils.  As the game moved around the world it came to be played in different climates and  different grass species were utilized. Nevertheless, the desired playing conditions did not change. The modern irrigation system became one of the tools used to create good golf course playing conditions. The restrained and judicious use of that modern irrigation system is necessary to create ideal playing conditions.

Living in the Sandhills of North Carolina, we are blessed with soils that are typically well drained. However, not everywhere is sandy. Under these rolling sandhills at various depths is a subsoil of clay.  Where the sand and the clay intersect you will find groundwater emerging to create the many streams and wetlands on the Forest Creek site. We estimate that under normal conditions, approximately 500,00 gallons of water "springs" up on the Forest Creek site each day filling our lakes. Natural rainfall adds even more water to our lakes. The location of these groundwater springs changes seasonally based on the depth of the water table.  In the summer,  most of the springs on site will dry up.  Many of the streams will stop running in the summer as the water table lowers. Heavy rains move quickly into our sandy soils causing the water table level to rise.  We will then see the groundwater emerge in different places. The routing of the Forest Creek golf courses traverses sandy hills and crosses numerous wetlands.  As the golf holes were shaped and the soil profile was changed,  thousands of feet of drainage pipe were installed to move goundwater off of the golf courses. Thousands of additional feet of drainage has been installed in the years since construction.  The goal was and still is firm and dry playing conditions.

Several years ago, when Jim Hyler was president of the USGA, that organization adopted the mantra that in regard to playing conditions, brown should become the new green.  In other words, firm, fast, brown conditions are superior to lush green conditions. Firm, fast and brown conditions are dry conditions. It is environmentally more responsible to manage the turf in a manner which creates brown conditions than one which creates lush green turf. The golf course superintendent should use their irrigation system to keep the turfgrass healthy but should not use the irrigation system to manage for color.  A healthy brown plant is preferred over a lush green plant.

There are presently wet areas on many areas in the fairways of the North golf course.  When we see a wet area we ask ourselves if there is a problem with the irrigation system.  We ask ourselves are we overwatering.  We are also concerned with  leaks in the irrigation system.  The irrigation system is a grid of rubber gasketed pipe. The system is maintained at a pressure of 120 PSI so leaks do regularly occur. If we suspect that a wet area is caused by a leak , we will valve off the irrigation system to see whether the wet areas will recede. We also analyse the location of our internal drainage  in reference to wet areas as this indicates where springs have occured in the past.  We believe that most all of these wet areas on the North golf course presently presenting themselves in the fairways are groundwater. Our heavy spring and summer rains have raised the water table and caused seasonal springs to present themselves in the soil profile above the drainage system. We cannot control the rain.  We try and control our use of the  irrigation system.  We cannot control the water table but we can try and manage it with drain lines.

Next week, we will begin extending our existing drainage systems into these problem wet fairway areas.  We will prioritize the drainage projects based upon their severity.  Most of these wet areas will dry up naturally as the water table recedes.  However they will  come back when we experience more heavy rainfall.

It is our goal to irrigate as little as possible to keep the turfgrass plant healthy.  There are times when we will water more than we would prefer such as ryegrass establishment and transition. There will be times when we have programmed our irrigation system to water and we get unexpected rainfall causing us to contribute to wet conditions.   There are times when the rainfall will be excessive and wet areas will occur.  But we will always strive to achieve playing conditions that are firm and fast rather than lush and green.

Chipping Green Renovation

The project to renovate the chipping green is progressing but is about a week behind schedule.  There are several reasons for the delay, but the most prominent reason is weather.  First we had tropical storm Andrea dump seven inches of rain on the property.  Six days later we had a huge straight line wind storm known as a "derecho" move across North Carolina and cause major tree damage.  I have experienced floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes but that was my first "derecho". Friday morning half of Moore County was without electricity from storm damage.  Wind damage was extensive with over twenty major trees coming down. Some fell with their roots looking like a pancake and many others snapped off somewhere in their trunk.  Two woodpecker cavity trees suffered the fate of snapping. All golf course resources, both personnel and equipment were dedicated to the cleanup. It was a mess with broken branches, leaves and pine cones everywhere. We lost several days of work to a tropical storm and several days to a derecho. We are still cleaning up the golf course perimeters.

Finally last week we were able to resume shaping the new green and irrigation will be installed on the new chipping green today.  We will be visited by Blake Bickford of Fazio Golf Design on Tuesday for architectural approval. We are scheduled for installation of "Celebration" Bermuda grass sod around the green on Wednesday.  We will sprig "Miniverde" ultradwarf Bermuda to the green surface on Thursday or Friday. The new green should be about 5500 square feet. We will have continuous Bermuda grass from the putting green to the chipping green. Going forward there will be suitable space for more than one person to practice in that area safely.

This chipping green is being built as a California style green rather than as a USGA style green.  This decision was made with input from the golf course architect as well as the turf grass professionals who sell and install the ultradwarf Bermuda grasses.  The style of construction will not affect the way the green plays but does affect the cost and difficulty of construction.  We were careful to make sure that the growing medium for the new green was a uniform silty sand. We removed the old internal drainage and mixed the sublayer of drainage into the old greens mix and capped it with our silty sand. We feel that this method will create a very good soil profile for growing Bermuda grass. The perched water table of a USGA style green is important for growing bentgrass but not so much  for bermuda grass.

Our Champion bermuda grass green which was planted two weeks ago is progressing nicely.  The sprigs have developed their own root system and stolons are just beginning to run outward from the lines where the sprigs were cut into the sand. The lines you see are typical of a bermuda grass grow in. The areas between the lines will fill in over the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, we are seeing more damage in the bermuda grass during transition this year than we had hoped for. The picture above is an extreme example.  We are seeing regrowth from the interior of most areas and have applied fertilizer to the entire golf course to promote growth.  Areas which do not recover over the next several weeks will be sodded.  It was a very late spring and the ryegrass lasted longer than normal.  Until we killed the ryegrass the bermuda could not recover.

Ryegrass, overseeding and transition

Ryegrass overseeding has a long tradition at Forest Creek.  We began overseeding in 1995 as a way to stabilize the newly sprigged golf course through the winter of 1996.  Some of the golf holes had been sprigged so late in the summer that turf density of the Bermuda grass was insufficient going into dormancy. The new and growing membership as well as the golf course architect liked the look and playability of overseeded ryegrass and we continued overseeding.  At that time in Pinehurst, the only golf courses overseeding  "wall to wall"were Pine Needles, Highland Hills and Forest Creek.  For many years we were loved by the seed merchants in Oregon as each year we would buy 100,000 pounds of ryegrass. Typically we would overseed at a rate of 400 to 500 pounds to the acre.

In the spring of the year when  ryegrass is at its peak, the aesthetics of mowing patterns and step cuts allow the golf course superintendent to create visually striking golf holes. Ryegrass in this part of the country will die in the heat of the summer and must be reestablished every fall.  Also because we are on the northern edge of the climatic zone which is suitable for overseeding,  the timing of fall establishment is tricky.  If you go too early you will lose the seedlings to heat and  disease.  If the overseeding is done too late in the fall then there is insufficient warm weather in which to mature the ryegrass plant.  Experience has shown us that the optimum time frame for overseeding is between September 15 and October 15. Immediately after overseeding there is a period of heavy watering for grass germination and establishment.  This is also one of our most popular times of the year for golf because of the excellent weather.  Everyone wants to play but no one wants to play on a wet soggy golf course. Thus we have found that no one likes overseeding in the fall and everyone likes overseeding in the spring .Other golfing areas have an easier time with ryegrass overseeding than we do because of a longer growing season. Places like Florida or the desert southwest might see their ryegrass grow all winter long whereas our ryegrass will shut down its growth with a hard freeze and not grow again until spring.

The other issue with ryegrass overseeding is the transition from being a polystand  of rye and Bermuda grasses to a mono stand of Bermuda as the weather becomes hotter. We are going through this transition on the South golf course right now. The transition process has been made easier by the introduction of new group of herbicides called " sulfanated ureas". We now have a group of herbicides that have been designed to kill ryegrass and poa annua without injuring the Bermuda grass.  These chemicals speed up the transition and lengthen the growing season for the Bermuda. Transition  can be ugly.  Rarely is the Bermuda grass perfect when the ryegrass is removed.  But with fertilization and patience the Bermuda usually fills back in.  Transition also exposes areas which have experienced injury over the winter from traffic or  "spring dead spot", a difficult and expensive disease to control..

We have found that by overseeding one golf course and leaving the other unoverseeded we can give very good playing conditions on one of our golf courses at all times.  In the fall the Bermuda grass golf course going into dormancy is preferred by most players.  In the spring the ryegrass golf course seems to be the favorite. These processes are difficult but they are undertaken to give the golfer a playing surface to enjoy.

Storm Andrea

Golf course work is part maintenance, part renovation and often extensive repairs.  Mother Nature dealt us a  significant blow this week.Tropical Storm Andrea blew up the east coast on Thursday and Friday dumping seven inches of rain on Forest Creek over a 48 hour period. We are blessed with sandy soils that recover quickly from rainfall and rarely do we have to close the golf courses. Unfortunately, where we do not have turf cover we experience washing of the features. The bunkers will wash down off the high flashed faces.  The sand cart paths wash out on steep slopes.  Another problem we are experiencing is springs surfacing and running across the cart paths making them sloppy.  We have had a very wet spring and the water table is very high and this moves the springs to places we do not normally see them.

Summer weather will solve our problem with the springs and cart path replacement with asphalt will solve the steep slope wash out problems.  Until then our work load will increase after each rain event. It is our goal to get weather related damages repaired as quickly as possible, but sometimes it takes several days until things are dry enough to do all the repairs needed.

Steep bunker faces wash out from heavy rainfall throughout the year.  We have more bunker repair work on the North golf course than the South. The high flashed bunker faces and native sand make this more of a problem on the North. Most of the bunkers on the South have a mined, washed, and screened sand from a sandpit in Lilesville N.C. It is a well draining sand with variable particle size.  The North sand was native sand found on site and was neither washed nor screened. It takes several days to restore all these bunkers after a major rain event.

Renovations Underway

 

We have been undertaking a number of construction projects this summer to improve the golf courses.  Cart path renovation has been taking place at Forest Creek for the last several years.  Our original asphalt cart paths on the South course were built in 1995 and are thus 18 years old. They were constructed of two inches of asphalt over a clay/sand base. These paths have been compromised over the years by tree roots and are disintegrating in certain areas due to their age.  We are removing this asphalt and replacing it with sand.  This has been a satisfactory solution in most areas but we will still need to resurface with asphalt in areas which wash out because of their steep slopes. We are spending a lot of time and effort repairing these steep sloped areas after heavy rains. It is our feeling that the sand cart paths are more aesthetically pleasing and create a more natural Sandhills look in the places which are flat.  We are realigning the paths in some areas.  We recently did this on hole # 7 South and hole # 9 South.  Dave L’Italien has changed his area of responsibility and is heading up this effort as well as our bermuda grass greens projects.  As part of this management responsibility realignment, Chris Noll has moved to the North golf course as superintendent and Graham Purcell has been promoted from assistant to superintendent of the South golf course.

The sprigging of the practice green in development section 17 took place  as scheduled on June 5.  The sprigs were transported in a refrigerated truck from Texas and spread by hand on the surface of the green.  The work was done by a crew from Champion Turf Farms. Approximately 150 bushels were used.  These sprigs were pushed into the sandy green surface with a roller and we are now watering them regularly.  These sprigs of Champion ultradwarf bermuda grass will develop their own root system over the next several weeks.  We will be fertilizing regularly and topdressing often in order to develop a solid canopy of bermuda grass.  We hope to have this green ready for play in 60 days.

Removal of the sod from the chipping green area has been taking place this week also. We are using this sod for various patch and renovation projects on both golf courses. The greens mix will be removed from the current green as soon as the weather permits.  Unfortunately we have a tropical storm headed this way. We will also remove the subsurface drainage and disconnect the irrigation system to allow for shaping of the new green complex. If all goes well by the end of next week we should be able to see a new and more versital practice area developing. This green will be sprigged to Minverde ultradwarf bermuda grass.