Can't Fight Mother Nature

This week, the PGA Tour is playing the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow Golf Club.  The news of the week has been the struggling greens.  A couple of their putting surfaces were deemed "unacceptable" for tournament play and re-sodded as little as 7 days ago!  As far as I know, a green being built seven days before a PGA event is to be played upon it is UNHEARD OF!  The rest of their greens have been described as "rough" at best and even likened to a "run-down municipal course".

First of all, the Superintendent and Grounds Department at that course is to be commended for their work in scrapping together the best conditions they can in a difficult situation.  Being an annual host of an LPGA event, I understand the pressure (often self-inflicted) that is on a superintendent to put forth perfect conditions for the pros.  According to the press I've read about this, Quail Hollow has long been considered one of the best maintained tracks out there and very highly regarded for normally fantastic putting surfaces.

The big question golfers will want to ask is simply "why?"  Smokey back rooms at private golf clubs around the country are probably full of crusty old farts making idiotic comments: "They are obviously a very nice club and probably have gobs of money and yadda yadda this is unacceptable yadda yadda fire the superintendent blah blah." As superintendents and golf industry people know, the answer in this case is quite simple: You can't fight mother nature.

Upon hearing about this story, I immediately started looking at industry related articles about it to get some facts.  The newspaper articles about it were piss-poor at best with confusing "facts" and misleading comments from club members and professional golfers. One journalist interviewed a former professional golfer that happened to be a member at Quail Hollow in which he blamed sand topdressing on the reason one of the greens died.  Just so you know, that is complete BS.  This course is managed by a professional superintendent under the advisement of the PGA tour agronomists and a very highly respected turf scientist from Clemson.  There's no way that happened.  I don't have all the facts, but 20 years in the business and a few industry articles I can piece most of it together.  Unfortunately, the real reason the greens suffered is all too common a problem at clubs like this and involves three key points:

1.  The greens are bentgrass.  North Carolina is a HORRIBLE place to grow bentgrass.  With the exception of some higher elevations that stay a little cooler, most of North Carolina can get very hot for very long stretches.  Bentgrasses are not adapted to suffer such long periods of high soil temperatures and after awhile they can just "check out".  Quail Hollow did everything they could to help the bentgrass survive - sub-air systems, I'm sure they had fans, and I'm sure they spared no expense to keep the stuff alive.  They have admittedly struggled the last few record hot summers so I'm sure they pulled out all the stops.

2.  The bentgrass variety was (reportedly) Penn G-2.  Over the last 10 years, G-2 has proven to be a real dud of a bentgrass variety.  It seems highly susceptible to bacterial wilt/decline issues and according to the turf scientist on the scene at QH, likes to segregate into different "populations" that react differently and inconsistently to maintenance practices.  As you all know, our neighbor Inverness Club is re-grassing their greens due to having "issues" with putting quality, speed, and bacterial decline.  They ALSO have Penn G-2 that is about 10 years old.  Hmmmmmm......

3.  I know what you're saying, it's SPRING!  Why is it dead now???  I suspect the decline occurred over the last few summers and they haven't had the weather to recover fully.  You all have been whining about the wet, cold spring we have had.  Grass only really started growing a few weeks ago.

So what you have here is a premier, wealthy club wanting the superior putting quality that bentgrass provides trying to force it to live and grow where it is not adapted.  On top of that, by sheer bad luck, they chose a poor variety to do it with.  Had they been able to look into the future, they could have chosen a different bentgrass and had better success, but likely would have struggled anyhow.  NO amount of money can override what a plant is capable of enduring.

From what I read, the club is doing the right thing.  Once the tournament is over, they are re-grassing with one of the newer greens quality bermudagrass varieties.  This has been the trend at more southern high-end clubs who were losing the bentgrass battle.  These bermudagrasses are adapted to hot climates and will thrive in the heat and should provide great putting surfaces with far less inputs, pesticides, and water than the bentgrass.

More importantly (to me at least), the superintendent will not be setup for failure.  Growing bentgrass in the Carolinas is more often than not a losing battle.  Having an appropriate species of turf will allow the grounds department to focus on making the greens great instead of just keeping it alive.  This will be good for the club, the staff, and the superintendent.

My overall point from the perspective of our club is this:  We are also growing a poorly adapted variety in an often harsh environment with our mostly Poa greens and fairways.  Most years we do fine, but when the weather takes a turn to the severe, things can get ugly as it did for us in 2010 and briefly in 2012.  We can't always provide tour quality conditions when we are spending so much energy just keeping it alive.  So please, when you are watching the Wells Fargo Championship this week, take it easy on Quail Hollow and especially my colleague there.  The club, NOT the superintendent, played with fire and got burned.

There's a link below to one of the articles that I grabbed this pic from.

The Greens at Quail Hollow this week.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/golf/headlines/20130501-golfers-compare-usually-immaculate-quail-hollow-greens-to-a-rundown-municipal-course.ece