COLORING FAIRWAYS

One of the trends in  the southeastern United States among Bermuda grass golf courses is the coloring of dormant turf with a turf colorant instead of overseeding with ryegrass. This trend began with the coloring of Bermuda grass greens as they were going dormant. Instead of overseeding them with bentgrass or poa trivialis, a colorant was applied. This trend has been carried over from its use on greens with success. This coloring is now common on Bermuda grass fairways and tees.  It is an undeniable fact that ryegrass overseed competes with the Bermuda grass into which it has been overseeded. This creates a weakened Bermuda grass plant at transition time and the Bermuda grass will then spend the summer recovering from this competition. Another issue with overseeding is that it needs to happen in October when our weather and playing conditions are usually excellent. It is necessary to water heavily during overseed establishment which then creates unsatisfactory wet playing conditions. Cart traffic must then be restricted to cart paths during the establishment of the overseed.  This is never a popular decision.

This year at Forest Creek we decided to not overseed either golf course.  We have also decided  to color the fairways, tees, and  approaches on the South Golf course.  We are using Endurant turf colorant from Geoponics. This is a high quality product designed to be used on turf.  The golf course industry has responded to this trend  of coloring turf by developing better products for this practice..  These products are formulated to adhere to the grass plant while causing no injury to the plant. They are considered to be perfectly safe for both the plant and the golfer.  We applied the Endurant colorant to the front nine on Wednesday and the back nine on Thursday. The ladies golf group played the first round of golf on this newly colored turf on Thursday and the comments were very positive.  We anticipate that we will do at least two more applications throughout the dormant season to maintain a satisfactory color.

This process has been studied at the university level and the USGA has several articles which examine this process.
"Instant overseeding: coming to a fairway near you", by Patrick O'Brien, USGA Green Section Record Vol. 50 (14), July 6,2012
"Switching from traditional overseeding to liquid overseeding", by Todd Lowe, USGA Green Section Record Vol. 51 (22), November 1, 2013

7 Fairway South after coloring

8 Green and Approach after coloring