The Ugly Summer of 2010by Harrell's

Blog, Golf August 12, 2010 10:18 am

By John Paul Newport, The Wall Street Journal

Brutal heat has greenkeepers fighting to save their courses from ruin

The sustained record-breaking heat across much of the U.S. this summer, combined with high humidity and occasional heavy rain, is killing the greens on many golf courses. A handful of high-profile courses have already had to close, and if the heat continues, others are likely to follow. Golfers themselves deserve part of the blame for insisting that putting surfaces be mown short and fast even in weather conditions in which such practices are almost certain to ruin them.

Huntingdon Valley Country Club outside Philadelphia, which dates from 1897, shut two of its three nines two weeks ago because of serious turf disease caused by the hot, wet weather. The Philadelphia area in July had 17 days of 90-degree-plus weather, six more than average, mixed with flooding thunderstorms of up to 4 inches.

Members at the Golf Club at Cuscowilla, east of Atlanta, received letters this week that the club’s highly regarded Ben Crenshaw-Bill Coore course would be closed for eight to 10 weeks so that the wilted greens can be completely replanted. The Ansley Golf Club broke similar news to members about the club’s in-town Atlanta course. “The continued, excessive heat and humidity have put our greens into a critical situation and the possibility of saving many of them is remote,” said a letter from the grounds-committee chairman. Even Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., the site of five U.S. Opens, is having serious weather-related problems with its turf.

The U.S. Golf Association last week issued a special “turf-loss advisory” to courses in the Mid-Atlantic states, urgently advising greenkeepers to institute “defensive maintenance and management programs” until the weather crisis ends. Most of the danger is to greens planted in creeping bentgrass and annual bluegrass (also known as poa annua).

“Physiologically, these are cool-season grasses that do very well when the air temperature is 60 to 75 degrees,” said Clark Throssell, director of research for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. “They can cope with a few days of 90-degree weather every summer, but when that kind of heat lasts for days at a time, they have extreme difficulty.”

Temperatures for weather reports are measured in the shade, but greens baking in the midday sun can reach 120 or 130 degrees. When grass spends too much time in soil that hot, it starts to thin out, turn yellow and wither. Most bentgrass strains will collapse entirely with prolonged exposure to 106-degree soil. The grass doesn’t go dormant—it dies.

Grass does have a mechanism to cool itself. It’s called evapotranspiration and is analogous to perspiration. The roots draw up water from the soil and it evaporates through the plant’s leaves, dissipating heat. But when greens are scalped to a quarter-inch, an eighth of an inch and even shorter, the leaf surface available for transpiration declines.

Prolonged heat causes other problems. One is that root systems shrink, sometimes to within a half-inch of the surface, reducing the amount of water drawn up to the top. Humidity and heavy rain make things even worse. Humidity retards evaporation, while soggy soil stays hot longer than dry soil does. Puddles and saturated soil also create barriers that prevent needed oxygen from getting to the roots.

Even when the combination of these factors doesn’t kill bentgrass and poa annua greens outright, it weakens the turf significantly and renders greens more susceptible to fungus and disease.

The sustained record-breaking heat across much of the U.S. this summer, combined with high humidity and occasional heavy rain, is killing the greens on many golf courses. A handful of high-profile courses have already had to close, and if the heat continues, others are likely to follow. Golfers themselves deserve part of the blame for insisting that putting surfaces be mown short and fast even in weather conditions in which such practices are almost certain to ruin them.

Huntingdon Valley Country Club outside Philadelphia, which dates from 1897, shut two of its three nines two weeks ago because of serious turf disease caused by the hot, wet weather. The Philadelphia area in July had 17 days of 90-degree-plus weather, six more than average, mixed with flooding thunderstorms of up to 4 inches.

Members at the Golf Club at Cuscowilla, east of Atlanta, received letters this week that the club’s highly regarded Ben Crenshaw-Bill Coore course would be closed for eight to 10 weeks so that the wilted greens can be completely replanted. The Ansley Golf Club broke similar news to members about the club’s in-town Atlanta course. “The continued, excessive heat and humidity have put our greens into a critical situation and the possibility of saving many of them is remote,” said a letter from the grounds-committee chairman. Even Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., the site of five U.S. Opens, is having serious weather-related problems with its turf.

The U.S. Golf Association last week issued a special “turf-loss advisory” to courses in the Mid-Atlantic states, urgently advising greenkeepers to institute “defensive maintenance and management programs” until the weather crisis ends. Most of the danger is to greens planted in creeping bentgrass and annual bluegrass (also known as poa annua).

“Physiologically, these are cool-season grasses that do very well when the air temperature is 60 to 75 degrees,” said Clark Throssell, director of research for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. “They can cope with a few days of 90-degree weather every summer, but when that kind of heat lasts for days at a time, they have extreme difficulty.”

Temperatures for weather reports are measured in the shade, but greens baking in the midday sun can reach 120 or 130 degrees. When grass spends too much time in soil that hot, it starts to thin out, turn yellow and wither. Most bentgrass strains will collapse entirely with prolonged exposure to 106-degree soil. The grass doesn’t go dormant—it dies.

Grass does have a mechanism to cool itself. It’s called evapotranspiration and is analogous to perspiration. The roots draw up water from the soil and it evaporates through the plant’s leaves, dissipating heat. But when greens are scalped to a quarter-inch, an eighth of an inch and even shorter, the leaf surface available for transpiration declines.

Prolonged heat causes other problems. One is that root systems shrink, sometimes to within a half-inch of the surface, reducing the amount of water drawn up to the top. Humidity and heavy rain make things even worse. Humidity retards evaporation, while soggy soil stays hot longer than dry soil does. Puddles and saturated soil also create barriers that prevent needed oxygen from getting to the roots.

Even when the combination of these factors doesn’t kill bentgrass and poa annua greens outright, it weakens the turf significantly and renders greens more susceptible to fungus and disease.

Continue reading this article at The Wall Street Journal. . .

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