It has been a while since I have written anything in the club newsletters, so the management committee have asked that I contribute to keep in contact with members. I am always happy to try and pass on information about what happens on our course and why. I will cover the following points, so grab a coffee this may take a while.
Course staff and interaction with golfers;
The Verti-drain and change to greens renovation;
Sand topdressing and what that means;
Green speed;
Tree Removals & planting and Tidy up of waste areas;
Drinking fountains
Course Staff & Interaction with golfers
Like any work greenkeeping can seem to be mysterious, what goes on in the background, and why certain things are done. I drive to work most days down the expressway and just about every day over the past few months there have been things done to make this road I guess, safer. Barriers and cable crash prevention strands installed, and I would love to stop one day and ask the question, why?
Greenkeeping can sometimes look that way, but there is a plan, and priorities of work. These can be influenced by traffic flows, staff availability, important events and weather. We don’t set out each week to upset or get in the way of golfers, and unless there is an important event, say a tournament, we don’t consider who is playing rather working to the plan. This may seem harsh but that really is the only way to get through the required work. We do however look at what is happening through the week and try to schedule work away from heavy traffic flows so we can be more efficient and less disruptive to play. When staff work within the golfers it can cause a potential problem with safety. We are aware of this, and with the current H & S focus a golf ball striking an employee could not only cause serious harm but can have repercussions for the club. I found this clip in the Mount Maunganui golf club end of year reports for 2018 -There is very little opportunity for our greens staff to undertake work around the course without players being present, so it is important that golfers consider our staff. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen and has resulted in contact between golf ball and machine or person on occasions.
That’s serious when someone is getting hit. Generally, members are very considerate, and hopefully so are our staff when it comes to integration of play and the work being carried out. There have however been instances recently when players have been impatient and hitting while the machinery is moving out of the line of play. Staff know what is happening around them, and have been instructed to work with a field, so will move out of the way when they have attended to a particular run or area to allow players through. They will often signal with a wave or in the case where we have a flashing light fitted to a machine, they will activate the flashing light when they feel there is potential for players to hit up. This then allows them to concentrate on finishing a particular run or operation in the knowledge players will not hit. Golfers can see the light, and once the light is extinguished can then play in the knowledge, they don’t have to worry about placing a staff member in danger.
This is very important when staff are carrying out what we call the clean-up cut on fairways, as this is the final run down the outside of the fairway. It requires concentration and the need to drive towards the tee, loop around the end of the fairway, and carry on moving away from the tee with no way of seeing what is happening behind. For some reason some players see this as the all clear to hit without waiting until the machine is completely out of range. This is where the light comes in, as once the light is activated the staff member can be certain he can carry out the clean-up without the feeling that he could be hit from behind.
Verti-drain and change to greens renovation
Our capital purchases for the course last year included two key items. The purchase of a new tractor which was linked to the purchase of a Verti-drain. A Verti-drain is basically as the name suggests a deep tine aerator that can renovate soil to a depth of 300mm improving aeration and vertical water movement through the soil profile. It can be set to move the tines vertically with a straight in and out action or can be set with kick where the tine enters the soil and the action of the Verti-drain can kick, giving a similar action to a garden fork. When set with no kick it works like a conventional coring machine but can penetrate much deeper into the soil profile. It can be fitted with solid or hollow tines. The tines can range in size from 6mm diameter, about the thickness of say a piece of number 8 wire, to 18mm, roughly the size of your thumb.
The purchase of this equipment allows our staff to carry out renovation work that has normally been handled by contractors. This has some advantages. Cost is one, and over time this will save the club and quickly pay back the capital invested. It gives flexibility around timing of these operations meaning not being tied to a contractor which must be booked in advance. This allows us the opportunity to bring the entire greens renovation in house.
Members will see that we have recently Verti-drained fairways with the 18mm tines to a depth of 175mm. Irrigated fairways can over time hold water due to traffic, compaction, and the return of grass clippings. They also suffer because irrigation systems are at best about 85% uniform in their distribution of water against rainfall that in theory is 100%. This can over time lead to what turf managers see as the wet /dry syndrome where some areas of turf either become excessively wet or dry when irrigation is used to overcome rainfall deficiency. The Verti-drain has revolutionised the ability to remove water through the profile and led to improved playing conditions on not only golf courses, but all turf playing surfaces.
The purchase of the Verti-drain will not only allow the improvement in drainage/aeration of fairways but also other turf areas on the course including greens. There has been a change in the past few years of courses moving away from hollow tine aeration on greens and adopting an approach of solid tines combined with more regular sand topdressing.
I will outline the basic principles of greens management because it forms a crucial part of golf green management at the club. Golf greens primarily have two critical things that prevent them from reaching the true potential. They are compaction, aeration and drainage which are all related, and thatch accumulation. If you can solve these problems, then most turf surfaces will perform well. Years ago, it was found that growing turf in a sandy medium was one way of helping to overcome some of the drainage and compaction issues, but it did not solve the thatch accumulation issue. Thatch is basically what a turf plant sheds during the growth process as they regularly replace stems, leaves, and roots. This material in its raw form gets laid down at the turf surface.
Sports turf requires some form of fertilisation to maintain a dense sward, the more fertiliser, the faster turf grows, the more plants shed material and consequently the faster thatch builds up. Left untreated this layer can form a thick mat of slowly decaying material which is soft spongy and is often extreme in that it is either full of water or completely dry. When dry it acts like a thatched roof on a house not allowing water to penetrate and when wet will hold water giving an unstable soft and spongy surface.
This is where renovation comes in combined with regular light applications of sand (topdressing). In the past renovation was in the form of coring to help remove thatch out of the surface, and sand to fill the holes created, aiding aeration and drainage. This was then followed up with regular light applications of sand through the year to help smooth the greens surface and modify the thatch. This means the thatch is not in a raw form but has sand intermingled with plant material making it more manageable. It breaks down quicker, is more stable, and doesn’t have the characteristic of the excessively wet or dry situation. The key is to lay down the sand topdressing at a rate that matches plant growth.
The latest trend for some clubs has been to eliminate the renovation part altogether but increase the topdressing frequency to allow better mixing of the plant material and sand. So, rather than try to physically remove thatch the aim is to try and prevent it from forming in the first place. This is only possible if thatch levels are under control before the program begins, if not, the raw thatch just tends to be buried in the profile causing more problems.
We have adopted a similar program replacing the hollow 12mm tines in favour of the 8mm solid tines which penetrate 200mm into the profile. We are not filling these smaller holes but allowing them to cover over and then increasing the frequency of sand topdressing to every two weeks in the growth periods, extending out to four weeks in winter. The renovation process that used to take three full days, we are hoping to reduce this to two, using less sand in the process, and hopefully gaining quicker recovery.
Sand topdressing is one of our most effective management tools for having firm smooth putting surfaces but does have drawbacks. The sand must be an acceptable grade; most particles have to fall in the 0.8 to 1mm range. This is becoming a problem in NZ as companies are now no longer accepting new customers just because they are struggling to supply existing clients. The development at Royal Auckland & Grange Golf Club has been a big player in the sand market over the past two years with hundreds of truck loads heading to build the new championship course.
Sand topdressing can also be upsetting to golfers as no one really likes putting on freshly sanded greens, and therefore we try to carry out this operation on a Monday morning if we can. Sand is applied and must dry before we can mat it into the greens surface, and this can mean that sand is still on the greens until lunch time on that day. We are going to change this method a little to try to improve this situation by wet matting the sand to give better putting conditions while we wait for the sand to dry, and then dry matting to finish the process. This will mean improved conditions for those early Monday players and hopefully improved sand removal from the surface.
The sand removal from the greens surface is important from our point of view as we don’t want sand being mowed up damaging our mowers in the process. Sand is very damaging to blades and in winter sand laid down and moved into the profile can often reappear on the green surface after a heavy frost. The frost somehow lifts the sand out of the profile so compounding the problem.
Green Speed
This brings me to the point of how sand, nutrition, and frost can combine to increase green speed.
Green speed can be one of the most talked about conditions in golf if they are painfully slow, or conversely painfully fast. As mentioned, before we really don’t aim course conditions for one particular group of players we try to look after the turf and hopefully that will accommodate all golfers of all abilities. Only if an important tournament is scheduled do we try to influence the putting speed of the greens, and this is generally for national events.
There are many things that influence green speed; cutting height, cut frequency, other physical treatments such as rolling, sand top dressing, weather, nutrition, turf species, and moisture content in the soil. This is a roundabout way of getting to why our greens speed up in the winter months. Some golfers often comment “I get more run in the winter than I do in the summer”. Well guess what, you are probably right. In fact, it’s logical when you think about it. How often in winter does it rain? Once a week, once every two weeks, or in case of Hawkes Bay once every 3 weeks. Then consider how often it rains on the course in summer. Surprisingly in the middle of summer the answer is once per day, in the form of additional irrigation.
When courses are irrigated, they receive water at a rate that overcomes the evapotranspiration rate. This is the term for how much moisture is lost by the combined effects of evaporation and plant transpiration. Each plant is essentially a mini water pump pulling water through to cool and carry out its growth processes. The hotter it is the faster the pump runs the more water is used and in summer the evapotranspiration rates can be in the range of 5-6mm per day against say 0.25mm in winter. Sure, the days are hotter and drier in summer, but the soil surface still remains damp until the end of the day, when the next cycle of irrigation is applied. It’s not hard to see that the course in mid-summer with approximately 25mm to 30mm of rain (irrigation) per week can be considerably wetter than that experienced in winter. On a relatively free draining course it is not uncommon for the course to play faster winter over summer.
As mentioned, Green speed is affected by various elements, greens tend to be drier as the irrigation system is shut down as winter approaches. They tend then to be firmer, and frost actually lifts moisture and sand to the surface contributing to firmness, and of course growth slows appreciably. All these things combine to suddenly ramp up the putting speed. The superintendent has limited tools to fight against this. He can raise the cutting heights; he can reduce the frequency of mowing, change the frequency of sanding, and apply some fertiliser to try to stimulate growth. We do all these things; we mow less often, we spread the gaps and limit the amount of sand applied, we don’t roll, we lift cutting heights minimally, and fertiliser is applied sparingly as too much can lead to winter turf diseases. Even with these measures if frosts hit, particularly a run of heavy frosts, it is almost impossible to keep green speed under control. Brett said to me a month or so ago that our course is one of the few that get better as the winter months approach, and he is probably right. I am sure if we could take a snapshot of the course say two months ago and roll that out each week there wouldn’t be too many complaints.
Tree Removals & planting and Tidy up of waste areas
Tree removals and planting can be some of the most obvious and talked about procedures carried out on any golf course. Trees should not be considered permanent fixtures on any course because they change over time creating problems such as root invasion, shading, leave debris, and hole playability.
The course must be treated as an ever-changing environment; it is not the same each day. Trees must be managed, or they dominate courses and, in some cases, can become a very expensive problem. Older trees can become dangerous, outgrow their position, shade areas that need sunlight, and when it comes time to deal with them no one wants to own that decision because it may upset someone, or it’s going to cost the club money.
Hastings Golf Club like a lot of older clubs has what you would term a ‘mishmash’ of trees. This happens when there is generally no plan, or the plan is lost over the years and changed as time passes. There is no real right way to plant out a course and, in some cases, the best courses don’t actually have any plantings and tend to go with what is natural to the area.
Australian courses seem to do this well and it really gives a natural look to the course but in New Zealand we seem to want to plant trees all over our courses. While young there is no real problem but lots of trees planted all over the free spaces on a course can over time make a course feel claustrophobic. Just think back to the harvest of pines and how that changed the outlook of our course.
There have been some plantings carried out on the course over the past couple of years with a view to screening areas such as the left of 4 to screen the buildings and maintenance facility. The plantings at the east end of the driving range are slowly screening and softening the building. There has been no replanting of pines in the area between 12th fairway and 13th tee so we have included cluster plantings that over time will tend to look after themselves and won’t become too big. The design of the 12th is almost entirely dependent on trees to shape this hole, but the planting aim here is to retain the planting influence while still allowing visibility as to exactly where the green is. This area has been difficult, as following in behind a pine plantation has its challenges, but with perseverance I am sure we will establish this area.
As we move forward course regeneration will be important, and planting and removals will play a big part of the future look of the course. Tree removals presently are aimed at tidying up some of the areas where pines were removed such as left of hole one. This has meant the removal of several trees to allow the opening up of the starting hole to improve speed of play and to help take the shading issues away from the effected greens 3 and 4 on the Short Course. We will continue to eliminate these rogue wattles from around the course and then grind the stumps to make these areas easier to mow and play from.
We have carried out some tidy up of areas within or alongside the new plantations such as right of 12th, right of 14th and stump area between 10th and 11th and will soon be working on the area left of the 15th. These areas will obviously soon become overtaken by the pines but until then we will try to keep the grass under control to speed up play.
What future work will we see on the course? The 5th green will be extended in front to allow more pin positions on the bottom tier. This will be done by a reshape of the ground followed by mowing out of the turf. Over time sand topdressing has elongated the step in this green and is limiting the flatter area on the bottom tier. The same is happening at the 15th but it is the back section that is lacking in pin positions. The plan would be to extend the back right of 15. There will be some more bunker work to keep the bunker program going at holes 4 and 13. There is also the possibility of extending the chipping green 4A to make this green larger.
Special thanks to all volunteers that have helped the club over past few years especially the time Andrea Cranswick has put into the planting operation. In early spring we will run another divot crew so hope we will get some members to help with that.
Water Fountains
With the recent frosts over the past week or so the on-course drinking founds have frozen. For now, the water supply to these has been turned off until each one can be assessed and repaired.
Please ensure you have plenty of water with you prior to teeing off.
I will try in future to keep in contact more with members and if there are any questions about our course please pass them on to the club management so I can respond.
Gordon Trembath
Course Superintendent