What Everyone Ought to Know About Bermudagrass

Spending Time with Old Friends …

In the past 7 years I’ve spent a lot of time researching the Ultradwarf bermudagrasses as a possible surface for golf greens.  In that time I’ve met a lot of experts and a lot of ‘self-proclaimed’ experts and generally speaking I’ve made a lot of friends.  Nevertheless, I was surprised and flattered when Morris Brown – the actual breeder and discoverer of Champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass – showed up in person to give his technical assistance to Old Chatham when our planting date arrived.  Morris started 46 years ago in the business of growing and breeding grasses.  

Morris Brown visits Old Chatham, July 11th.

Accompanying Morris from the gulf coast of Texas was a truck load of Champion Bermudagrass sprigs.  It had been a little over a year since I last saw the same plants growing when I inspected the farm in Bay City where they were developing.  Every golf green in the world planted with Champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass received its initial plant material from Bay City, Texas.

The Star of the Show – Champion Bermuda Sprigs.

Also arriving with Morris Brown was the top installation crew from Champion Turf Farms.  This crew has planted about every marquee golf course that has Champion you can name – including last year’s host of the PGA Championship –The Atlanta Athletic Club.  Supplementing their crew was the golf course maintenance staff at Old Chatham.  Roughly 40+ people were working solely on the greens during the planting process that lasted over two days July 11-12.  An additional 20 people were working on preparation for the new bunker complexes.

With an accurate measurement of each green in hand, the installation crew “stages” the bags of sprigs on the green and begins the process of shaking the sprigs.

Staging Sprigs on the Putting Green.

First Roll of Sprigs on Putting Green.

Topdressing Sprigs on 15th Green.

Second Roll of Sprigs shown on 15th green.

… And then we water, water, water some more, and for good measure water a bit extra.  Since the sprigs have no root system when they arrive, we must provide near constant watering in the initial part of the grow-in as they are very perishable otherwise.  The separate irrigation “starts” are so numerous we turn the task over to a computer, which initiates 566 separate starts per day for all the golf greens. 

Irrigation running on Sprigs on 18th green.

Other work continues…

We continue to work on growing-in the new Tifgrand collars, green surrounds, and new homogenous grasses on the 2nd and 7th fairways.  The majority of this effort is spent smoothing, topdressing, adding fertility inputs, and mowing these areas.  Also removal of broken concrete is well underway.  As of this writing about 80% of the concrete to be repaired has been removed prior to preparations to re-install it.

Concrete Removal from Cart Paths.

We have also finished re-shaping the chipping green complex and adding a tilt to the green surface.  This new feature will allow the path of the ball to be visually seen longer, resulting in more helpful training feedback.  The formerly lower side of the green received a tilt bringing it up nearly two feet to accomplish this.  Additionally, two subtle features were added to better replicate what a player would encounter on the golf course.

Chipping Green Renovation.

A few more statistics…

15,000 – Number of gallons of water each green requires daily during the initial grow-in of sprigs

21 – Number of greens being grown at one time (including the nursery green)

2 – Number of equivalent years of wear to the irrigation system (greens only) during the initial grow-in

25 – Number of emergency bags of sprigs left by Champion for use at Old Chatham if needed

0 – Number of emergency bags of sprigs needed at Old Chatham

1,000 + – Number of Golf Greens planted with Champion, discovered and bred by Morris Brown

0 – Number of other installers Champion allows to install their grasses for greens

Best wishes,

Brian Powell, CGCS

Rain Or Shine, Course Enhancement Continues

The Open Doctor doesn’t wilt in the heat…

On Friday July 6, Rees Jones spoke to members attending the member cookout and provided a brief update on the renovation.  Rees also provided insight into how a golf course architect works, while speaking about a few of the many great golf clubs he has impacted with his design talents.  What many in attendance did not see were the hours in the 100+ degree heat Rees spent on the golf course reviewing alterations with Sr. Vice President of Rees Jones Inc., Greg Muirhead.  Rees and Greg have combined for 4 onsite visits to provide feedback and guidance to Old Chatham staff in the first 2 weeks of our project alone during the important stage of implementing alterations to the putting surfaces on the 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th, 11^th, 15^th, and 18^th greens.  All parties involved are excited about the results of the improvements and the interest they will add to the golf course.  It was a special treat for Rees to stay Friday evening with the membership. 

And then the rain came…

Old Chatham experienced some heavy rain on July 6^th.  As a result of the rain, some temporary damage occurred to some of the construction areas.  While this is not uncommon in this type of work, it is frustrating as it can cause a delay to any carefully planned schedule.  In our case, we have moved the planting of the greens back until July 11 (Wednesday) to accommodate the repairs.  Judging by this week’s forecast, it may not be the first delay we encounter as a result of rainfall. 

Green collars get a face lift…

As part of the CEP, Old Chatham is converting its “collars” to a different type of Bermudagrass which should provide a finer playing surface than their predecessor did.  The improved variety (Tifgrand) is a bit more diminutive, and tolerates lower mowing better than the older Bermudagrass (Tifway-419) used previously on the collars.  All 21 collars were successfully replanted last week.

Collar removal and preparation on the 12th green.

Homogenous fairways…

During the previous week, we also removed and replanted the landing area (fairway) on the 7^th hole to homogenize the turf used on that hole.  In the past we had replaced only an area of turf with a more winter hardy Zoysiagrass to better withstand winters.  With the work completed last week, the entire fairway will look and play uniformly and survive the winter more efficiently. 

Removal of grasses on 7th fairway.

Preparation to plant grasses on 7th fairway.

Replanted 7th fairway.

Also, the 2nd fairway has had the same process completed as of this post, and we hope to complete the final fairway we are impacting similarly, the 12th hole, next week. 

Rock Chalk Jay Hawk…

The staff isn’t turning into Kansas fans, and we certainly aren’t for anything with the word “Rock” in it.  As part of the new bunker installations, we are relocating irrigation pipe and wiring at 5 of the sites we are adding new bunker complexes.  If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to run a 96 pound jack hammer in 105 degree heat with no shade, we’ve got an experienced staff that can now talk at length about it.  It was a happy day when the jack hammer we were renting went back to the rental store.  I think the staff hopes it doesn’t find its way back to Old Chatham again.

Jack Hammer work to remove rock in irrigation trench in 18th hole rough.

A few more statistics:

(6) Most consecutive days of 100+ degree weather ever recorded at RDU July 3-8

(105) Highest temperature ever recorded at RDU July 8, 2012

(17) Number of days staff has worked out of a possible 18 despite record heat to continue schedule

(45)  Number of man hours spent raising or lowering irrigation heads around greens to accommodate changes to green surround undulation changes

(55) Number of minutes remaining prior to his flight when Rees Jones left Old Chatham for RDU Friday night

(15,000) Number of square feet of new Caviler Zoysiagrass on the 7^th and 2^nd fairways

What’s next?

Planting of Greens Wednesday July 11, 2012

Removal of non-homogenous grass on hole 12 fairway and replanting - week of July 16

Begin removal of dilapidated concrete cart path areas

Additional work on new bunker complexes

Continued leveling near greens as new construction work settles – ongoing

Mowing fairways, tees, rough, bunker banks etc… (It would seem the grass on the golf course is oblivious to all the other work we have to do and continues to grow)

Best wishes,

Brian Powell, CGCS

Course Enhancement Project Begins

It’s been a busy 11 days since the course enhancement project began at Old Chatham.  The project is running on time and the construction team is very happy with our progress.  The ‘team’ assembled for this project are the golf course architectural firm of Rees Jones and Sr. Vice President Greg Muirhead,  Shapemasters, a golf course building company based out of Southport and your golf operations and course maintenance staffs.  The ‘team’ was involved with the original construction of Old Chatham and it’s proving a real asset to have a group of people so very familiar with our golf course. 

What to expect when you’re expecting…

When you have a strong design for a golf course as Old Chatham does, the art of pulling off a great renovation and redesign hinges upon integration of new design features into preexisting concepts that are already enjoying great success.  To that end, we’ve “hit it out of the park” so far and I hope you all can attend the member event on Friday July 6 at 6pm to see a preview for yourself.  Rees Jones himself will be here to talk to the members in attendance.  If you would like to see a preview of the work that’s been done, or you merely want to ask Rees about what he did to Medinah in preparation for this year’s Ryder Cup it should be a good evening for all and a chance to do both. 

The nuts and bolts of the work…

Act I:  Death of a 12 year old…

The first stage in a conversion to the newer Ultradwarf bermudagrasses involves eradicating the grass that lived on the former putting surfaces.  To achieve this we treated the greens and the surrounds with a non-selective herbicide.  As the herbicide is non-selective in nature, we have to take great care to insure it only ends up where we want it.  The process actually began on the front nine as the final putts were being made in this year’s spring member guest invitational.

It takes about 1 week for the herbicide to translocate throughout the plant and do its job of killing off the undesirable turf species and when we closed on June 18, we were ready to begin the next part of our process.

Act II:  Scalp it a little, verticut it a lot… Rinse and Repeat, Rinse and Repeat, Rinse and Repeat (you get the picture)

The Ultradwarf bermudagrasses love growing through old dead Bentgrass provided they have some soil to come in contact with for rooting.  In order to preserve the shapes of our greens, we aggressively mowed and scalped the greens, verticut them, mowed and scalped again, verticut again, and continued until we lost count.  This part of the process allows us to remove leaf tissue from the former plants to make way for the improved varieties we will be planting.

Mow and Scalp

Vertical Mowing

More Vertical Mowing

Mowing and Scalping

Act III:  Aerate a lot, drag it all in and eat a lot of dust in the process….

After all the mowing, scalping, and verticutting we aerate all the greens 2 times and drag in all the cores with a steel drag mat.  This will provide good aeration for our new plants when they begin to grow and dragging in the cores allow us to keep the desirable soil that comes off the plugs on the green. 

Aerating

Dragging Cores

Act IV:  Where did all the green color go?

Finally after 5 days of intensive preparation, all the greens look more like dirt and less like a green.  They still have their contours in place (the greens were not enhancing with contour changes that is) but they are an excellent “bed” for our sprigs which will be arriving on July 10. 

Close Up of Green and New Sprig Bed

Act V:  To be continued…

As you can see we’ve done a lot in the first week and a half and we hope you will continue to follow us on the Old Chatham Blog.  Oh, and we did manage to squeeze in mowing all the fairways twice (the grass still grows), mowing the rough one time, mowing the tees once, setting up the range daily, aerated all the fairways, aerated all the tees, aerated all the approaches, and top-dressed fairways, tees, and approaches as well.    

A few early statistics:

700 Tons of sand used

50 People average working daily

5 Days of 100+ degree weather forecast

9 Tons of sand per green used just to level the areas for the new collars alone

2 Visits by past president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects and Senior Vice President of Rees Jones Inc Greg Muirhead to offer onsite feedback

61 Number of Miles I drove never leaving the golf course on Monday approving changes and redirecting staff as progress required (1 lap around the cartpaths at Old Chatham is about 4.5 miles) 

What next?

July 6^th, a member gathering and cookout at 6pm. 

On July 10, the greens will be planted with Champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass.

Construction on the new bunkers will pick up speed as July progresses.

Grassing of the new collars will occur around July 4^th.

Grassing of the 2^nd, 7^th, and 12^th fairways to one homogenous grass variety will begin near the end of this week.

Best wishes,

Brian Powell, CGCS