Anthracnose happens. It happens on Poa annua putting surfaces … and sometimes on bentgrass. It happens when soil temperatures soar … think above 70 degrees. It happens in the Northeast, the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic … and in parts of the Pacific and mountain West.

BASF senior technical specialist Kyle Miller calls anthracnose the “ultimate stress disease.” Turf managers sometimes correlate their own stress to the potential of an anthracnose emergence. The disease, after all, appears during the trickiest part of the growing season.

“I often talk about anthracnose as a chronic disease,” University of Connecticut assistant professor Dr. John Inguagiato says. “We have gained the ability to manage it, but it’s always there. It’s always lurking, and if you let your guard down, it’s certainly going to come up again and be a problem.”

Anthracnose has lurked in Inguagiato’s professional life for nearly two decades. He started studying the disease as a graduate student working under the legendary Rutgers duo of Dr. Bruce Clarke and Dr. James Murphy. The comprehensive work studying cultural and chemical controls continues to improve the quality of greens in the anthracnose belt.

Anthracnose is a crown and foliar disease. Northeast-based turfgrass pathologists see plenty of it. Anthracnose and summer patch are the top two diseases sampled in the UConn lab, according to Inguagiato. Lab results provide a partial snapshot of anthracnose’s prevalence. “People have become pretty good at self-diagnosing the disease,” Inguagiato says. “It’s like dollar spot with self-diagnosis. I don’t ever get a dollar spot sample, but I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of dollar spot out there.”

What should superintendents be looking for? Yellow flecking is a visible symptom of anthracnose on Poa annua, according to Inguagiato. Miller suggests being cognizant of weakened turf with patches displaying yellow and orange. “You look at the turf and you’re like, ‘Wow. It looks sick. It needs some CPR,’” he says.Miller cites traffic, mower, heat, leaf wetness, low soil fertility, close mowing, droughty conditions, wet conditions and slightly compromised root systems as stresses leading to the disease.

Controlling anthracnose requires careful examination of the following cultural practices:

Nitrogen management. Research at Rutgers and UConn has found steady spoonfeeding in the summer and larger applications in the spring provide optimal nutrition for thwarting anthracnose. “Maintaining sufficient nitrogen fertility is really important,” Inguagiato says. “We identified early on that light, infrequent applications — a spoonfeeding approach of one-tenth of a pound every seven days — is really effective in reducing various diseases. We also both have found that putting a little more emphasis in your granular and higher-rate nitrogen applications in the spring was actually more beneficial at reducing summer anthracnose than when you put the bulk of that fertility in the fall.”

Mowing heights. The lower you go, the more susceptible turf becomes to anthracnose. Backing off just a bit, especially in the summer, can protect turf. “We looked at mowing heights just over one-tenth of an inch to .141,” Inguagiato says. “With each incremental change in mowing height, we would actually be able to see visual differences with the amount of anthracnose that was present.”

Topdressing. Dispersing sand isn’t just good for playability. Research Inguagiato conducted during his stint at Rutgers indicated topdressing offers anthracnose protection. The results of the research surprised many, including Inguagiato. “The thought at the time was that topdressing caused wounds to the plant and that the fungus was probably getting into those wounds and making the disease greater,” he says. “We looked at different application rates and intervals in the summer. The more topdressing that we applied, the less anthracnose — or the less severe — the anthracnose was.” Over time, Inguagiato adds, sand builds up in the upper profile, creating scaffolding around the plant, thus helping it support the weight of a mower and “raising the height of cut a little bit.”

Chemical controls for anthracnose are aplenty and have been studied extensively, although limiting the scope of a program can place turf in peril. “There are some good fungicide chemistries out there, but I don’t think there’s any one chemistry by itself that can provide season-long control,” Inguagiato says. “We have certainly learned that it takes a rotation of different chemistries. And oftentimes we get the best results when we use tank mixes and pre-mixes of different products that combine two different modes of action in a single spray.”

Based on trials at UConn and other universities, Inguagiato recommends building an anthracnose fungicide program for anthracnose control around chlorothalonil and “some type of phosphonate product.”

“Around that, I think you add in other modes of action,” he adds. “Historically, strobilurins or QoIs have been extremely effective against anthracnose. However, we have seen a considerable amount of resistance to that class of chemistry and the unfortunate thing with the strobilurins is that when you have resistance, you pretty much lose completely efficacy. It’s either all or nothing. If you don’t have resistance, then they can be a great option.

“The DMIs are good against anthracnose. We have certainly seen some differences among the DMI fungicides. Some of the older DMI chemistries like triadimefon or myclobutanil when it was prevalent, even propiconazole, we see some of those to be a little less efficacious against anthracnose, whereas DMIs such as tebuconazole and triticonazole or metconazole are a little more efficacious.”

Options for anthracnose control increased last summer when BASF released a pair of new DMIs: Maxtima® fungicide and Navicon® Intrinsic® brand fungicide. “We have been really pleased with the way Maxtima and Navicon have performed on anthracnose,” Miller says. “We feel like that’s one of its strengths, along with dollar spot control. We feel like we have given superintendents another top tool in the toolbox to battle this disease.”

Once a fungicide rotation is developed, Miller urges superintendents to remain diligent with their summer programs. “Anthracnose is one of those things you don’t want to get behind on,” he says. “You want to stay ahead of the problem. You have to have tight spray intervals. Anything more than a 14-day program is probably not going to cut the mustard.”

Even with carefully adopted cultural and chemical controls, anthracnose will likely remain on the cool-weather disease radar.

“Our turf on golf courses is so intensely managed,” Miller says. “We’re mowing very, very tight and we want fast ball roll, so we sort of set ourselves up for this a little bit. That’s one of the reasons I think anthracnose will continue to be a problem 5, 10, 15 years from now. We’re asking more and more of the turfgrass.”

Researching new products for the turfgrass industry requires curiosity and cooperation. Sometimes the process also involves the act of finally lifting a veil.

In early June, university researchers learned the identity of three solutions they had been studying for years: Posterity XT, Posterity Forte and Ascernity. Syngenta is responsible for introducing the trio of fungicides, which offer control for diseases on cool- and warm-season turf. Their development provides insight into the methodology behind researching new products. Testing desires and procedures vary by company. Syngenta uses blind tests for new products.

“We give researchers a product with an ‘A’ number and say, ‘Please test it,’” longtime Syngenta senior technical manager Dr. Mike Agnew says. “We want to get good early data to give us an idea of how good a product is going to be in the marketplace. We do the ‘A’ number so it’s a true blind test.”

Dr. Bruce Clarke and the Rutgers team have studied Ascernity (SOLATENOL technology [benzovindiflupyr] and difenoconazole) and Posterity XT (ADEPIDYN technology [pydiflumetofen], propiconazole and azoxystrobin) since 2011 and 2017, respectively.

Dr. Jim Kerns and the NC State team have studied Ascernity and Posterity Forte over the course of multiple years. “One thing I want to reiterate,” Kerns says, “is that we had no earthly idea of what we were working with until June 1.”

What did Clarke and Kerns — along with Agnew, who helps facilitate trials — learn through the extensive testing? The trio spoke with Golf Course Industry about testing procedures and their work with the new solutions. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

As educators and researchers who enjoy learning, how exciting is it to test something new?

Kerns: It’s always exciting to be able to hopefully deliver new tools to turf managers. The issue when you see something is that it may not make it. But the past three or four years have been a really nice time for fungicides, because there’s a lot of new testing.

Clarke: In the late ’80s, we started seeing a reduction in the number of products available in the marketplace and a lot of people were really concerned that we wouldn’t have many products left if we didn’t see new chemistries released in the future. The companies have really put a strong effort into brining new chemistries to market. It’s exciting working with them to see what’s coming out and how it’s working into the various programs with superintendents in our area. Working in New Jersey is very similar to working in North Carolina. There are a cornucopia of diseases and perfect conditions for diseases. It’s heaven for a plant pathologist to work in an area like this.

What’s your reaction when you finally discover what you are testing?

Clarke: When you find out what a new product is and that it’s actually coming to market, that’s when I go back and intensely look at our past data. It’s quite amazing how good some of these new products are, but because they have been coded during several years of evaluation and there are so many different numbered compounds, you don’t have time to put it all together until you know that a product is actually going to be released.

What diseases did you test Posterity XT for and what did you see in those trials?

Agnew: We have tested it on several disease, including dollar spot, brown patch, summer patch and even anthracnose. Another one that’s critical from North Carolina all the way to Rhode Island is gray leaf spot.

Clarke: We focused on brown patch control and it’s outstanding for that disease. It also did exceptionally well on dollar spot and gray leaf spot, which are difficult diseases for us to control. For gray leaf spot, we usually test it on a fairly susceptible cultivar. Spores of the pathogen blow in from the south, especially when tropical storms move up the east coast. It doesn’t really overwinter here to my knowledge and It can devastate ryegrass areas.

How will Posterity XT fit into an agronomic program?

Agnew: Posterity XT is No. 1 for fairways. We need broader spectrum and long-lasting materials on fairways. It provides very good dollar spot control and is a very good Rhizoctonia material. It’s a summer application for the control of dollar spot and anthracnose. You have two active ingredients that can control dollar spot and you have one active ingredient carrying the load for brown patch. We’re also looking at it for gray leaf spot on fairways and for a summer patch application.

Clarke: The beauty of combining multiple active ingredient into one product is that it broadens the spectrum of activity for many of these diseases that occur at the same time. It not only makes it easier for a superintendent to put one product in a tank, but it helps guard against resistance issues and gives them very good control against major diseases in the summer like brown patch and dollar spot.

What have you learned in your work with Posterity Forte?

Kerns: Four or five years ago, we saw that Posterity worked really well against spring dead spot. One of the unique things with some of these new active ingredients is that the control spectrums can be unique and this one is pretty unique. When you take Posterity with dollar spot, fairy ring and spring dead spot control … nothing really links those three together all that much. We have looked at (Posterity Forte) for spring dead spot and take-all root rot and we have had it in fairy ring trials, all on ultradwarf Bermudagrass and it performed exceptionally. When we are spraying for spring dead spot, which typically happens at about a 70-degree soil temperature, we’re also hoping to get take-all root rot control on Bermudagrass. On a putting green, Posterity alone wouldn’t do that and that’s where the Forte is really going to come in handy for us down South, because we have seen very good results on take-all root rot. Agnew: Posterity Forte is unique because it contains the full rate of ADEPIDYN but a reduced rate of propiconazole to make a little bit of difference and it also contains a lower amount of azoxystrobin than Posterity XT, so it’s really geared toward those southern turf were superintendents prefer lower rates of DMI fungicides. Kerns: That’s a good point. DMI fungicides can be a no-go zone on ultradwarf Bermudagrass. We have not seen phytotoxicity with Posterity Forte. I do want to make the point all of our treatments were watered in. Even good-ole Banner (Maxx II), if it’s watered in, it’s relatively safe on the ultradwarf Bermudagrasses.

How do you view Posterity Forte fitting into an agronomic program?

Kerns: The nice thing about this is that we have found with take-all root rot that we need to start spraying in July and continue all the way into the fall. We now have multiple products that you can fit into a rotation, but the Posterity Forte can fit right at the end and give you both (control of spring dead spot and take-all root rot). When you have multiple active ingredients, it gives the consumer flexibility of where they want to put it based on the disease.

Agnew: In the North, it’s a product you can put out if you’re in a heavy dollar spot time period when brown patch happens. We have seen a lot more September and October brown patch activity. I like it sometime in the summer for northern climates, where you might get a little bit of brown patch, to those areas in the Mid-Atlantic where you get a significant amount of brown patch in that September and October period.

What have you learned in your work with Ascernity?

Clarke: We have done more work with Ascernity than the other two products. It’s a very strong dollar spot material. We have also had very good anthracnose control and those are two really big diseases for us in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. We have done a little work with brown patch and had good results with that disease as well. It’s broad spectrum. The nice thing about Ascernity is that it has difenoconazole it in, which is a DMI that we haven’t seen any phytotoxicity with, which is always a concern of superintendents in hot weather. And because it has two different active ingredients, it’s good to use for resistance management.

Kerns: Ascernity was pretty new for us. It was already registered as part of a snow mold solution. We had it in a curative large patch trial this spring and it was outstanding. We have worked with the two active ingredients for a long time. We had done screening for large patch isolates because we see some really interesting dynamics that some folks have questioned and, in turn, we screened SOLATENOL and our isolates were the most sensitive to it. It is going to be a nice large patch material for us. We think of it being used on zoysiagrass fairways, but there’s more and more talk of these new elite zoysiagrass putting greens. Large patch is going to be the major issue with those and we’re going to need something to use there. The difenoconazole has been a staple on ultradwarf Bermudagrass putting greens. Part of the reason is that it’s a DMI and there’s no phytotoxicity. I suspect this is going to have one of the broadest labels for Bermudagrass because of these two active ingredients.

Agnew: It has a very broad label. There are new diseases we are finding out with it every day. With a product that has SOLATENOL and difenoconazole, I’m starting to expect the unexpected these days. We’re going to put it on a greens programs for control of summer patch, brown patch and anthracnose. It contains one of only two SDHI active ingredients on the market that can control anthracnose – the other being Velista. We also look to segment products to different areas of the golf course. It’s a heck of a product on fairways.

What we have your learned about length of control and intervals with these products?

Kerns: It depends on the disease. For something like large patch, we’re looking at a 30-day interval. For take-all root rot, people want it for 21 days to a one-month interval, but that isn’t happening. It’s going to be more of a 21-day interval. Spring dead spot is also monthly.

Clarke: Most superintendents are looking at 14 days of control with products on greens. With fairways, they would really like to get 21 to 28 days. When conditions for dollar spot are conducive, I think you’re really hard-pressed for any product to last more than 21 days. From that standpoint, Ascernity fits into a rotational spray program very well. There’s no problem getting 14-day control and, in many cases, 21-day control. In certain cases, where the weather is not conducive to dollar spot, you may get more extended control. But 14 to 21 days is pretty much what superintendents are expecting and I think that’s what they will get with this product. Agnew: The great thing about Posterity XT for fairways is that it controls over 20 diseases for up to 28 days. It is not common to get such long control of so many diseases with one product.

What is your role after a product reaches the market?

Clarke: Once a product comes to market, our work isn’t done, it’s only beginning. We get a lot of questions from superintendents about new fungicides. You have to put information about these products in perspective in comparison to current standards in the market. We have five or six years of research data from our trials before something is released. That gives us a lot of comfort in terms of being able to make a recommendation — or at least a statement — of how effective a product is under a variety of conditions. Kerns: It’s been easy to this point. Now that they have opened Pandora’s box, that means the questions will start … and rightfully so. Once superintendents learn about pricing, then there are a lot of questions. Clarke: Working at a university, we don’t have to worry about price, just efficacy. We let superintendents know how effective something is and they decide whether it can work in their budget.

A Texan by birth and upstate New Yorker by more than two decades of residency, Dave Hicks becomes antsy when the calendar flips to March.

Hicks wants to be outdoors with his loyal team preparing the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course at Cornell University for the Finger Lakes golf season, a charming sprint between abundant frost and foliage. The way Hicks sees it, the course represents a vital part of university life, offering alumni, students, faculty and friends escapism from the Ivy League hustle. “To the golfers,” Hicks says, “it’s a gem. They treasure it.”

One of three superintendents in the course’s 79-year history, Hicks also understands the bosses of his bosses might not be as transfixed by the game. Golf experienced a hiatus at Cornell earlier this year and a campus-wide shutdown because of COVID-19 required Hicks to spend part of late March at home instead of layering up and monitoring how turf responds to the unforgiving Ithaca winter.

Hicks works at an office designed for easy social distancing and the asset he oversees quickly deteriorates without routine maintenance. Fortunately for his mental state and the condition of a course possessing the name of a Cornell and golf icon, the unexpected stay at home lasted just a week. Hicks returned to work before turf started actively growing. Cornell reopened the RTJ course on Memorial Day, though Hicks has led a smaller and less seasoned team than during previous years.

Campuswide conundrums as colleges endure major procedural and budgetary challenges related to the pandemic are testing superintendents at courses owned by universities and prep schools. The abrupt end of the spring semester, questions surrounding the fall and long-term financial obstacles all lowered golf’s place on the administrative priority list. Instead of operating as standalone small businesses, campus courses — which total 131, according to the National Golf Foundation — represent small slices of the big and increasingly fragile business of higher education.

“When you hit a really crunch time and when a thing hits us like this pandemic, what’s your natural reaction? You go to your core and what you’re there for,” Hicks says. “Whether we like it or not, the golf course is not the center of the universe for the university. We didn’t open until Memorial Day because the top people at the university were trying to make so many huge decisions to even bother themselves with making a decision, one way or the other, about the golf course. We just stayed closed until they got to it.”

As life stalls within the academic and athletic facilities surrounding campus golf courses, even the savviest trustees, presidents, chancellors, deans and athletic directors can’t prevent turf from growing. Superintendents are not only keeping turf alive and protecting assets designed by golf treasures such as Robert Trent Jones Sr. (and his sons), Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and other. They are helping provide needed social and recreational outlets in communities suddenly altered by the pandemic.

State College, Pennsylvania, bustles with activity in March, as more than 45,000 Penn State students scurry between academic buildings and businesses, adding vibrancy and commerce to a community with slightly more than 42,000 residents. The cancelation of in-person classes in mid-March produced scenes Penn State Golf Courses superintendent Rick Pagett had never witnessed.

“It was weird being in this town,” says Pagett, a Penn State alum and State College resident for the last 20 years. “There were no cars on the street. My wife and I would go for a walk on a Sunday morning and there were no cars on College Avenue, no people out. It was an eerie, weird feeling. It was bizarre.”

The oddities extended to the 36-hole Penn State Golf Courses. Unseasonably warm weather, Pagett says, resulted in more play than usual to begin March. The play ended abruptly when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf closed business not deemed life-sustaining in mid-March. Wolf, though, considered asset protection essential, allowing golf course maintenance to continue. With Pennsylvania courses closed until May 1, the only early spring activity on Penn State’s 36 holes and expansive men’s and women’s golf team practice facilities originated from Pagett, assistants Scott Martell and Gabe Menna, four full-time employees, and six seasonal workers capped at 20 hours per week.

“That was another eerie feeling,” Pagett says. “I remember being on the back of the driving range going from the Blue Course to the White Course and I just stopped my cart and all you could hear were birds. There were no golf carts, no swing of the golf clubs, no smack of the ball. … It was so strange to be the only ones on the golf course for six weeks.”

Notre Dame Golf Courses superintendent Matt Cielen enjoyed an expected silence during a weeklong trip to Aruba in early March. That silence ended when he checked his phone upon landing in South Bend, Indiana, where he has lived since accepting the top Notre Dame turf job in 2004. “I turned on my phone,” he says, “and couldn’t believe everything had changed.”

Cielen oversees the maintenance of 27 holes, including the Warren Couse. Just last spring his team was preparing the Coore/Crenshaw design for the U.S. Senior Open. The Warren Course was scheduled to host a 2020 NCAA Division I Regional, an event Cielen was using to help diminish the letdown that turf teams encounter following a major championship.

“Then we get the call and find out the regional is canceled,” Cielen says. “That kind of changed our whole world here. We share a parking lot with the men’s and women’s varsity golf teams. I’m looking out my window at their building and it’s been vacant since basically the week after everybody had to have all their stuff out of the building.”

Notre Dame closed the Warren Course until June 2 despite Indiana being one of the first Midwest states to permit golf. The first month without golf at Notre Dame included a team of Cielen and four others trying to maintain an intricate design poised for a big revenue year following the attention it received in 2019. They were also responsible for constructing a new practice putting green. The school kept its 9-hole course closed through July. “Everything was day-to-day for us,” Cielen says.

Duke University closed its championship course even longer than Notre Dame.

General manager and PGA director of golf Ed Ibarguen collaborated with his Duke University Golf Club team and fellow industry professionals before submitting to university officials what appeared to be thorough reopening protocols involving single-rider carts, wearing masks, eliminating touchpoints, longer intervals between tee times, and limits on the number of people inside the pro shop and restrooms. But the Robert Trent Jones Sr.- and Rees Jones-designed course remained closed as nearby Atlantic Coast Conference rivals NC State and the University of North Carolina hosted thousands of golf rounds.

Duke officials implemented a four-phase reopening plan, with members returning to the course June 8. The course reopened to the public four weeks later.

“It took a while to sink in what the impact was going to be,” Ibarguen says. “Initially, it was we were going to close down until we could come up with some very specific protocols on safety and procedures with how we are going to operate. We did that pretty quickly and submitted those to campus. But Duke University was not going to mess around.”

The Duke staff, which includes superintendent Brendan McNulty, aerified playing surfaces, repaired bridges and improved driving range drainage during the closure. Ibarguen estimates 250,000 pinecones were cleared from the course during the closure and pro shop merchandise was counted and disinfected multiple times.

“I talked to the university immediately about what would happen if we stopped maintaining the course,” Ibarguen says. “The amount of time that it would take to recoup the condition to offer it again to members and public would have actually cost far more and done more damage. As a result, the golf course is in fantastic condition right now, because we did maintain it.”

Full-time employees remained employed throughout the closure. Seasonal workers are being called back to work in “a very slow manner,” Ibarguen adds.

Hicks has experienced a similar delay in procuring seasonal workers at Cornell. The early spring crew consisted of just three golf course maintenance employees, including Hicks, who crafted a plan to keep the Jones creation intact for the return of golf. Hicks opted to bypass irrigating Poa annua fairways this year to trim water, fertilizer and chemical costs, raised mowing heights on greens, and prioritized rough mowing based on proximity to fairways.

Cornell officials initially targeted mid-July for the reopening. Like many things in 2020, the plan changed. The university wanted to reopen on Memorial Day and Hicks and his small team responded by quickly offering a presentable course to golfers.

Less mowing and irrigating turned the course into an agronomy lab to study less intense maintenance practices. Increasing mowing heights to .170 on greens allowed Hicks to experiment with green contours and shapes that could be part of a potential renovation led by alum Gil Hanse.

“My personal motto has been, ‘Where’s the win?’” Hicks said. “My first thing was depression, but then it was, ‘There’s got to be some way we can be better coming out of this.”

While some college golf courses have shuttered for the spring and summer — and, in at least one unfortunate situation, for good — there have been wins. So many superintendents have learned how to work leaner than ever. So many courses have been filled with golfers.

University Ridge Golf Course at the University of Wisconsin at Madison is one of them.

“We’ve had full tee sheets, doing 160, 170 rounds a day,” says superintendent Phil Davidson, noting that works out to somewhere between 80 and 95 percent of what normal spring and summer days draw. “We’re definitely busy as far as rounds go. If the weather’s good, they’re here. What that equates to revenue, I haven’t really paid attention.”

Georgia Southern University Golf Course, too.

“A full golf course might be 180, 200 rounds in the spring,” superintendent Patrick Reinhardt says. “We have 100, 110, but we don’t have an open tee time all day. Numbers-wise, we’re actually higher than last year, I think, because normally when it gets hot in the summertime, we might hit 40 or 60 players a day, and we’re still running 70 or 80.” Most July afternoons have approached triple-digit temperatures, and “we still run 60-some — and we didn’t even have any tee times from 11 to 1 because it was so hot. It’s good, we’re generating revenue. We’re a public course, so we rely on revenue.”

Despite working in different climates and different time zones, Davidson and Reinhardt have worked through many of the same struggles this season and are in similar situations today.

Thawing out of the Wisconsin winter, Davidson and his crew maintained a closed course until April 17. Reinhardt endured 10 weeks of being closed to the public, finally opening again on May 22. Davidson has worked with “a skeleton crew” alongside six other full-timers, though he has had help a day or two each week from the head and assistant pros, and he was finally able to hire “a couple seasonal guys” in June and two students in July. Reinhardt has a non-student crew of four that includes an assistant superintendent, a mechanic and a grounds worker, but watched 10 of his standard 25 student employees opt to head home for the summer during the early days of the pandemic.

“Everything has changed,” Reinhardt says. “Interactions with our staff, interactions with our customers. Golf course training is one-on-one and we’re working with a lot of students who have never worked on a golf course before. How do you train somebody how to operate a fairway mower while still keeping your distance?”

The differences are in how their respective courses are managed and operated under the university umbrella. University Ridge, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. design, is a part of the Badgers athletic department and while its operations are relatively independent, some capital projects are tied to athletics revenue. “That’s where we would see a difference,” Davidson says. “But as long as we have rounds coming through, we’re self-sustaining.” GSU Golf Course, meanwhile, is a part of the school’s Campus Recreation & Intramurals department, which allows for more autonomy and less reliance on outside factors.

At least Reinhardt and Davidson both have golfers on their courses. In another corner of Georgia, the UGA Golf Course at the University of Georgia in Athens has been closed for the last four months. In the Northeast, the famed Yale Golf Course never reopened in the spring, has been without a superintendent since March and was being maintained by a two-person crew working four hours per day into early July. Even worse, Dartmouth University cut both its men’s and women’s golf teams and permanently closed its 121-year-old Hanover Country Club last month.

“Everybody is in a unique situation, especially colleges,” Reinhardt says. “You don’t know what goes on behind closed doors at universities. I’m just happy we’re able to open and serve the local crowd. The nearest public course is another 30-ish minutes away. It’s good to be open. It’s nice that the university lets us be open.

“We’re just glad we’re working. We’re happy we have jobs. There are a lot of other people out there suffering. We’re fortunate we’re in our own little golf course world here and we can do our jobs.”

Play never stopped and full tee sheets are the 2020 norm at Keith Hills Golf Club, a 27-hole facility owned by 6,400-student Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. Unlike his college course colleagues, superintendent Damon Dean hasn’t been forced to significantly curtail labor hours from a staff budgeted to include 10 full-time and 10 part-time employees.

The Campbell University golf teams use Keith Hills as their home course. But the facility is not operated by the athletics department. Instead, the course is affiliated with the business school and PGA Golf Management program. Keith Hills is averaging close to 250 rounds per day this summer and midway through July it had nearly matched the revenue total for the entire month last year, according to Dean.

“We’re supposed to be self-sufficient in the university’s mind,” says Dean, who’s in his 12th year as superintendent. “We’re non-profit, but we pretty much hold our own. Golf has been booming. We are breaking records every weekend as far as the amount of revenue that we are bringing in.”

Keith Hills sits just 55 miles from a course in a contrasting situation as the fall semester approaches.

“Everybody imagines a school like Duke having an unlimited budget,” Ibarguen says. “That’s just not the case. (COVID-19) has had a devastating financial impact to every aspect of the university.”

The impact on Duke University Golf Club is already quantifiable. Ibarguen’s bosses asked him to restructure the 2020-21 budget and the club started the fiscal year beginning July 1 with an operational budget $400,000 below original projections. From pro shop merchandise to maintenance equipment leases, Duke reworked deals with numerous partners.

The course is considered part of the athletics department. The salary of Ibarguen and McNulty’s most celebrated colleague, men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, has been cut twice since the onset of the pandemic. A Ryder Cup-style tournament as part of Krzyzewski’s fantasy basketball camp represents one of many golf outings either postponed or canceled this year. More than 100 university courses, including the Duke University Golf Club, operate under a model offering discounts to golfers with university affiliations supplemented by fees from public play.

“You’re trying to make up the difference on your public play to the point where you’re hoping to break even,” Ibarguen says. “For the average golf course out there, managers are asking, ‘What kind of operation can we have that maintains the golf course in a reasonable to good condition to warrant the fees that we are asking?’ And that’s under the understanding that with most university golf courses it’s paper thin between losses and break even because of the discounts you’re giving to the students.”

The short-term financial challenges facing courses operating under this model are immense, especially considering the questions surrounding the ability of athletic departments to generate close to projected football and men’s basketball revenue. “There’s a lot of uncertainty,” Ibarguen says, “but I’m optimistic with us having the ability to operate effectively come next spring.”

The golf course operations budget at Notre Dame had been cut 20 percent compared to 2019 levels as of mid-July, according to Cielen. The university instituted a hiring freeze in mid-March and the course has received labor help from other departments that aren’t fully functioning because of pandemic-related closures. On busy days, Cielen is leading a crew of 10 workers, which is nearly half of 2019 staffing levels.

The labor reductions could result in a 40 to 50 percent budget reduction for the fiscal year, Cielen adds. But optimism permeates because the Warren Course nearly established a revenue record in June despite a closed clubhouse and merchandise sales limited to online purchases. The practice range set a monthly revenue record in June.

“The thing that keeps us in a good position right now is the fact that we are a public facility,” Cielen says. “Our demand is so high because it’s an accessible golf course that hosted a major championship and is affordable. I tend to believe as long as COVID has a hold on the country and people have to make adjustments, golf is going to continue to be something that’s successful. As long as it is, we’ll be OK.”

With many entertainment options shuttered since late winter, Pagett has observed renewed golf enthusiasm in central Pennsylvania. The Penn State Golf Courses reopened with tee-time intervals of 20 minutes. The interval has dropped to 10 minutes on both courses. “We are slammed with play,” Pagett says. “We’re the only thing in town that people can do and they’re out here playing.”

Count Pagett, Martell and Menna among professionals finding more time to play golf in 2020. The turf managers are using evenings to play or practice with their children assuming they can find an open tee time or practice area space. “It’s hard to get out there,” Pagett says. “The driving range is packed, the putting greens are packed, the golf course is packed. It’s been very, very well-received and the people that are playing are just excited and happy to be here and out of the house.”

Florida is the land of oranges and sunshine, at least according to the standard state license plate. Florida is the land of golf courses, too, with more inside its borders than any other state, and whenever you walk around Palm Beach Par 3 — and yes, you should walk if you can — you will find plenty of sunshine splashing off the surfaces of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, though precious few oranges. Those two nautical bodies also provide some of the more incredible backdrops available on any course in the country — championship length or short, private or public — their absolute borders limiting the layout and enhancing the beauty of Palm Beach Par 3.

The 18-hole course measures just 2,572 yards, with no hole longer than 211, all of it packed into 39 acres that straddle State Route A1A. If you discount its distance, you’ll miss out on a pristine and popular gem.

The parking lot, tee sheet, course and even the clubhouse restaurant were all filled during a Thursday afternoon visit in January. The sunshine was perfect. Tim Campbell, who arrived as the superintendent in 2005 and worked through a Raymond Floyd redesign three years later, says the course was on pace for a record year before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down operations for six weeks in April and May.

“I feel like people want us to be up to the standard of the private clubs in the area, and I feel like we’re held to a higher standard because of that,” Campbell says. “I have some great clubs to the north and the south of me that are private” — all of them championship length — “and I want people to come here and think they’re at a private club. I want them to look at the conditions and say, ‘Wow, we’re getting the same thing we would get at the local private club down the street.’”

Campbell is not the only short course superintendent working with that philosophy. Short courses are booming, with more construction and seemingly more rounds in recent years than at any point in American golf history. Premier destinations like Pinehurst Resort and Bandon Dunes have entered the conversation with their recent respective additions of The Cradle and Bandon Preserve, joining more exclusive short-course stalwarts like Augusta National and Pine Valley. Rounds at the facilities open to the public are almost always quicker and less expensive than a standard 18, and they can provide a more welcoming entry point for younger and new golfers.

“There are people who join golf every day, but there are just as many who quit golf that same day,” one prominent turf pro whose property recently opened a short course says. Short courses “give them a chance to stay in the game and enjoy it.”

Among the more prominent challenges for short course superintendents is the increased attention to detail. When your agronomic footprint is a fraction of a standard course, every inch is magnified. “I’m probably picking it apart every day because I’m always trying to make it better, just trying different things to improve it,” Campbell says. “I feel like that’s an important part of my job, to be able to constantly pick it apart to make it better.”

Campbell always wants to improve cart path edges and bunker edges, for instance. He always wants greens to roll better, “because paspalum is notoriously slow,” he says, “and you have to do a lot to keep the speed up.” He knows there is work to do on the pump station and the well head next year. He installed bee colonies in February. The first batch of honey has been selling out quickly in the pro shop. The project list could continue forever.

“I’ve always felt our shortcomings here were just in labor,” Campbell says. “You know how golf is, everything’s labor-intensive and the clubs that look really good have a lot of labor. Obviously, we’re trying to be smart with every hour of labor that we have, it just takes manpower to do things. I’m lucky that management above me is good, that my staff is good. I’m in a good situation.”

Campbell currently operates Palm Beach Par 3 with a crew of nine, a number that includes two town employees and one part-timer, with hours back up to pre-lockdown levels, and a recently approved budget will allow him to add another equipment operator starting in October. “The goal of that person will be to help us focus more on little details,” he says, “so that we can edge more, so that I can probably roll greens every day to make the quality better for when people come and play here. We can get to that private-club level a lot of days but I don’t feel like we can do it every day. This is going to get us to where we’re pretty close all the time.”

Palm Beach Par 3 has been in the game longer than most short courses, opened since 1961, and owned and operated by the town since 1973. Campbell, a dedicated triathlete who planned to participate in a Half Ironman this summer before the pandemic shut down just about all competitions, shows no signs of stopping.

“I’ve dreamed of being at a course where I could host a Tour event,” he says. “But when I came to work here, Tom Vlach told me, ‘Don’t get comfortable.’ That’s one of the reasons I think I pick this place apart, because I don’t ever want to get comfortable here. I want to constantly be looking to make it better. I want to come out and feel like it looks good, which I do, but I always want to try to figure out a way to make it look better.”

All for a perfect couple of hours on the course.