Pests and disease decimate golf courses and can wreak havoc on a season before it even gets started. Superintendents appreciate the importance of planning and being alert to potential problems before they become season-ending catastrophes. We asked the experts about the potential pest pitfalls turf managers may face in their respective regions this year and what to keep an eye out for before it becomes a major problem.

west

Patrick Gross is based in Santa Ana, Calif., where he serves as the West Regional Director for the USGA Greens Section. Gross notes there is no single particularly troublesome disease or pest in the West. He attributes this agronomic status quo to the professionalism of the superintendents he works with day in and day out. “There’s not one biggie wiping everybody out [in the region],” he says. “Superintendents are on top of their game.”

Many superintendents maintaining turf in the West will be watching for rapid blight, a disease that was first identified in California in 1995, Gross says. This pathogen affects cool-season grasses and tends to thrive in soil with elevated salt content or areas irrigated with saline water. Most concerned are superintendents managing Poa annua greens, but rapid blight can also impact bentgrass putting surfaces. Its impact is devastating to turf. Rapid blight can kill infected turf in as little as two or three days. “It comes on so suddenly,” Gross says. “And it can cause a lot of damage.”

Gross recommends attacking rapid blight with a combination of Mancozeb fungicides and Insignia. A big key toward warding off rapid blight is managing soil salinity. “(Rapid blight) is very tightly related to elevated salinity in the soil,” he says. “No. 1, you’ve got to lower the salinity.”

Winter rains, or the lack of them, has a significant impact on soil’s salinity level. “Last year (the winter of 2017) we had decent winter rainfall that really leached the salt out of the soil,” Gross says. “But previous to that we weren’t getting winter rainfall and that salinity accumulates. Guys think that because it’s cool outside that they don’t have to worry about the salinity, but you should constantly monitor the salinity with a hand-held meter. So that’s important, along with leaching or heavy applications of water to drench the soil and lower the salinity.”

southeast

By now, the golf season in Florida and the rest of the Southeast has kicked into high gear. At the same time, Dr. Adam Dale has focused his attention on the Bermudagrass mite. “I got the most calls about this pest at the beginning of 2017 and probably 2016 also,” says Dale, a University of Florida assistant professor of entomology and nematology.

The Bermudagrass mite is an eriophyid mite, meaning it feasts on a single strain of turf. In this case, it sets it tastes on Bermudagrass. As is the case with other eriophyid mites, it is extremely small and extremely difficult to detect, even with a high-quality hand lens. The pest typically makes its appearance in the spring, Dales says, and is found across the Southeast, where Bermudagrass prevails.

“It is pretty widely distributed throughout the Southeastern U.S., but seems to be most problematic in Florida, Georgia, and parts of South Carolina,” he says. “But they find it over in Texas, also.”

The pest creates what Dale describes as a “witch’s broom” effect. “Imagine a chute of Bermudagrass that looks like a broom,” he says. “It’s got a long chute and all the foliage is tightly grown in a big tight wad at the tip of that chute.”

The presence of the Bermudagrass mite results in thin strands of turf that are, in Dale’s words, “really clumpy looking.” The net result is an uneven playing surface.

The pest is most commonly found on Bermuda fairways, particularly in low-cut areas. It is also found on tees and greens. To control and manage Bermudagrass mites, Dale recommends a lower mowing height than normal. “We did a trial where we had some Bermudagrass that was mowed at about an inch,” he says. “We came in and mowed it to about a quarter-of-an-inch and collected all those clippings that we cut up and removed them from the system.

“What we saw was that just from mowing really low and collecting all the clippings we reduced the damage and the abundance of the mites by about 50 percent for the rest of year.”

The nematicide Divanem has been effective in combating the Bermudagrass mite, Dale says, adding the label has recently been updated for use against Bermudagrass mites on golf courses. Dale and his team made two applications of Divanem at a 14-day interval. The most effective application rate proved to be .14 oz/1,000 square feet

northeast

For superintendents based in the Northeast, the annual bluegrass weevil (ABW) is always a concern. While the pest has been migrating westward and southward in recent years, it is most common in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast sections of the country, as well as in Canada. It was first identified in Connecticut in the early 1930s.

Some turf experts, among them Dr. Albrecht Koppenhofer at Rutgers University and Dr. Ben McGraw at Penn State, have theorized there is a strain of ABW that thrives in a golf course environment.

The ABW is most common in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.”-

Jim Skorulski, a USGA agronomist based in Palmer, Mass., advocates an integrated approach in dealing with ABW that encourages establishment and growth of bentgrass, which is a less effective host. He also recommends properly timed insecticide applications – monitoring ABW activity via WeevilTrak – for maximum control of both adults and larva. This is coupled with rotating products from different insecticide groups, or those with different modes of action, to prevent or slow the onset of resistance.

With ABW, resistance issues have become more problematic in the case of ABW. “Resistance to the insecticides has been a major concern that has impacted management programs,” Skorulski says. “Researchers have demonstrated cross resistance, where the annual bluegrass weevil becomes resistant to one chemistry and is able to detoxify other chemistries, as well. Golf courses with reported resistance rely on newer chemistries that more aggressively target the larval stages of the insect.”

Skorulski notes that Ference, a Syngenta product, and Conserve, which is produced by Dow, are two of the newer products that have become popular in ABW management programs. However, in some circumstances, superintendents might benefit from tolerating some insect activity, he says.

“Control expectations can be very high, and it might not be such a bad thing to tolerate a small amount of feeding injury of annual bluegrass at least on tees and lesser-played fairway areas,” he says. “The amount of damage that can be tolerated is based on many factors and would vary from golf course to golf course. Maybe it is time to selectively reduce some of the inputs that protect annual bluegrass in favor of more durable bentgrass.”

central

Come spring, turf pros in the Central region will be on the lookout for dollar spot. However, “cleaning up” in the fall can reduce the likelihood of a major spring outbreak, says Dr. Paul Koch, an assistant professor of plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin. “If you go into the winter with disease, you’re more likely to have disease the following spring,” he says. “Failing to clean up areas of dollar sport or whatever it might be is going to make you more susceptible to disease the following year.

“If you cleaned up pretty well the previous year and had healthy turf growing into the snow cover, then you’ll start off the next year disease free; that puts you in a more advantageous spot. Once you get behind once there is already a disease present, it takes more effort, it takes more fungicide, it takes more money to get it under control.”

Koch has been seeing major fall outbreaks of dollar spot in recent years. Controlling the problem before snow arrives is a major challenge. “We’re seeing more and more dollar spot occur in the fall,” he says. “I don’t know why that is. There might be different genetic strains that occur in the fall than those that occur in the summer, (but) in most years we have a fairly big fall dollar spot outbreak. If we don’t clean that up before winter comes along, sometimes it’s just too late in the fall (to prevent problems in the spring). We’ve had dollar spot outbreaks in November in the past. That’s tough to clean up prior to snow cover.”

The weather also has a “trigger effect” on dollar spot that remains from the fall. Koch recalls the spring of 2012 when March temperatures in Wisconsin rose to record levels and remained there for a full week. “We didn’t see any dollar spot then,” he says. “But when it did occur in May, it was much more aggressive than it would have been in a typical year. It kind of exploded on you. Whereas, in a normal year it would be a spot here, a spot over there, it would slowly build up. That year – I think it was May of 2012 – it was very aggressive. It came on very quickly.”

What is likely happening is the dollar spot fungus is getting inside the plant well before turf managers see symptoms, Koch says. “It kind of hangs out there for a while and then there is some sort of trigger that causes symptoms to develop.”

Koch recommends combining iron sulfate with conventional fungicide applications to enhanced dollar spot control. “Iron sulfate without any fungicides, is not likely to give very effective dollar spot control,” he says, “but what it does do is when you combine it with your normal fungicide program, it helps to knock down the fungal population and makes it easier to control.”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer and frequent GCI contributor.

As we put this year’s State of the Industry issue together and took a long, hard look at the data, we debated about how to summarize what we found as a big headline for our cover illustration.

Was it fair to say that, “The Golf Business is Back?” I rejected this one because I hate the notion that our business is getting “back” to a fake boom time when a lot of awful decisions got made. It also reminds me of the current golf media obsession with Tiger being “back.” Puh-leeze! Can’t we just run our business like a business without relying on the return of Eldrick “The Messiah” Woods to succeed?

Was it more accurate to say that, “We’re Getting Healthier?” Well, that’s true too but it doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s unquestionable that industry suppliers have been pleasantly surprised with sales in a “slumping” golf market the past few years and the number of courses closing has held steady at about 175 a year, but that’s not “health” in the traditional sense of growth and expansion.

Should we stick with, “The Building Boom Continues?” Duh. We’d just be telling you what you already know, although I think the information we developed – along with the study done by our friends at the ASGCA – provides a new level of insight into what kind of remodeling is being done and why.

So, those possible summary statements are true, but we went with “The Great Reinvestment” as the truest appraisal of the state of golf in 2018 for a bunch of reasons.

First, it’s undeniable that we’re in the midst of the biggest remodeling boom in golf history. It’s finally occurred to everyone that courses must change and improve to compete.

Second, the amount of money being spent in a “flat” market is astounding when you total it all up. A couple of billion dollars a year is being poured into improving bunkers, recontouring greens, fixing nagging drainage problems or the soup-to-nuts redesigns and restorations we’re seeing at the highest end of the business. Finally, since it’s not about getting “back” to the old days, it must be about reinventing golf for the future. That’s what we’re seeing now.

I won’t lie … the Great Reinvestment will not be a rising tide that lifts all boats and magically solve golf’s broader systemic problems (time, perceptions, women, kids, etc.). Instead, it’s going to further separate the Haves and the Have Nots in our industry. The U.S. simply can’t support 15,000 golf courses. The fact that smart operators are investing and giving picky golfers a better product will doom a lot of stale, badly run facilities that have been limping along for years.

The divide is going to widen into a chasm and many small, underfunded operations won’t be able to cope with the competition and the inevitable, grinding rise of labor costs. In the future, there will be two kinds of golf courses: those that manage labor costs effectively and those that become condo complexes.

That said, I’m heartened by the willingness of thousands of courses around the country to reinvest now to ensure better futures decades from now. That’s both farsighted and a sign that banks have regained some confidence in our happy little industry. Sure, many clubs are self-financing their renovations, but others have borrowed. That could not have happened five years ago.

I guess I’ll pat myself on the back for years of saying that a “smaller, smarter golf market is emerging.” What I didn’t see coming was how aggressively operators are investing in that scenario. They see, at the local level, opportunities not just to survive, but to thrive. In fact, a bunch of them are just kicking ass right now. A surprising number of clubs are posting astonishing profits (“excess revenues”) these days and there’s no reason to think that will change absent some catastrophic event that will make us all forget about golf’s petty problems.

So, here we are nearly a decade after our generation’s Great Recession, and instead of talking about the death of golf, we find that we’re in the midst of the Great Reinvestment. Golf is finally getting smart and supply and demand will even out over the next decade. We’re incredibly fortunate in many ways that we didn’t kill our own industry with stupidity and overbuilding (though we tried). Now it’s up to us to steward the business of golf the same way you steward your property … intelligently and always with an eye on the long term.

Here’s wishing you an awesome 2018 … and a bright future for all of us.

Greens aren’t the only recreational surfaces that must be consistent at Gull Lake Country Club.

Attracting members and revenue to the western Michigan club, where a prolonged golf season might last seven months, requires offering winter and nighttime activities.

Start storing the mowers in November. And tune-up the snowmobile?

The evolution of private clubs means employees such as Gull Lake superintendent Jesse Shaver, assistant superintendents Drew Boike and Craig Veeder, and equipment manager Sam Holysz must resemble fellow Michiganite Tim “The Toolman” Taylor. Since becoming Gull Lake’s superintendent in 2010, Shaver has overseen the construction and maintenance of an ice rink, intermediate and advance cross-country ski trails, and a bocce ball court. The non-golf recreational areas complement an 18-hole golf course supporting 12,000 annual rounds in a condensed season.

Snow or Poa, Shaver’s team, which includes five year-round employees and swells to 15 in the summer, finds ways to help Gull Lake expand its amenities, bringing multiple generations to the club’s 110-acre grounds. “To me, that’s the fun part of the job,” Shaver says. “I’m not just taking care of the golf course every day. I get to do a bunch of different things and learn a lot more about different areas of life and what it takes to make a club viable and successful.”

Shaver knew Gull Lake planned to expand its offerings when he applied for the head superintendent position, and turf concerns partially sparked his first non-golf recreational project. Gull Lake lacked formal cross-country ski trails, so members unknowingly crossed greens and fairways during winter workouts. Shaver studied how other Michigan clubs handled skiing and presented members with a plan in 2011 to route maintained trails away from key golf course features.

“I talked to a bunch of different people, researched what we needed, gave them a price and they said, ‘Do it,’” Shaver says. “Then we had to do it.” The result is two trails, one hillier than the other, consisting of 2 ½ miles of skiable surface. Shaver laughs when describing how a tractor pulled the groomer during the first winter of trail maintenance. “That was a pain because we got stuck all the time,” he says. The club purchased a snowmobile the following winter, and Shaver says during an average week – snowfall totals quickly fluctuate – his team spends “four to five” hours maintaining the trails. Snow is packed in layers at the beginning of each winter, creating the necessary base to handle the wear produced by skiers.

Trial, error, ingenuity and a sense of humor allowed Shaver’s team to handle its next winter project: the construction of a 50’ by 70’ ice rink. Members had previously skated on Gull Lake, but erratic winter temperatures raised safety concerns. The club decided to build a rink in a section of the parking lot bordering the platform tennis courts with easy bathroom and hot drink access. Constructing the rink is akin to using an erector set, with frames and boards labeled and arranged in an orderly fashion, although creating a flat surface represented a dilemma because the parking lot falls 18 inches where the rink sits. Freezing additional water on the lower side is a tricky task and offered no guarantee of yielding a consistent surface. The solution, coincidentally, originates from a golf course maintenance staple. Dispersing 90 tons of compacted topdressing sand on the lower end of the parking lot produces an even skating surface. The sand purchased for the rink is used on the golf course the following spring.

The rink is collapsible and a member who owns a trucking company donated a trailer for storage. Course accessories are stored in the trailer during the winter. The rink opens in mid-December. The average winter week, Shaver says, includes six hours of rink maintenance, and Gull Lake’s version of a Zamboni is a handheld unit using a hose. An operator walks around the ice to smooth the surface.

The crew first constructed the rink in 2012, a year before bocce ball arrived at Gull Lake. A patio renovation emphasizing gathering areas made bocce ball a fit for the club, again turning Shaver into a recreational detective. Shaver studied the one court he could find in the area and he worked closely with the landscape contractor who installed the patio. Golf course renovations force a superintendent to spend hours researching grass varieties before recommending a surface to a committee or ownership. Bocce ball court construction propels a manager into the Har-Tru clay vs. oyster shell debate. Shaver selected Har-Tru clay which needs groomed, rolled and even watered to limit dust during dry stretches. Maintaining the court requires around four hours per week, with Boike and Veeder using their baseball experience to produce a splendid surface.

“They are really hungry to perfect it and make it better, and they understand how the weather is going to affect it,” says Shaver, who frequently demonstrates progress to members and exchanges ideas with industry peers via Twitter. “It’s been a learning curve for all of us. How do you take care of a bocce ball court? We didn’t even know what one looked like, so taking care of it was a trial and error, talking to people and finding how they take care of their tennis courts, how some of their tips and tricks can help us with our bocce ball court. It’s the same thing with ski trails and ice rink. I kind of figured it out, trained one of my assistants and he trained another guy. It just trickled down the line.”

The bocce ball court and ice rink are lit, expanding nighttime revenue opportunities. Add placing Christmas decorations around the club, constructing a Halloween house, and maintaining beach and yacht areas, and Shaver’s team has provided entertainment for every grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, daughter, son and guest Gull Lake services.

“It’s an evolution of the superintendent’s job,” Shaver says. “And it’s the evolution that country clubs specifically need to make or have been making over the years. The days of dad spending five days a week at the club are over. Those days were a great time, but you have to really appeal to the families and younger generations and have something for the kids to do and have something for the mothers to do or a lot of these families aren’t going to be members anymore, or won’t be members to begin with.”

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s senior editor.

Great golf courses are designed to foster good golf. Golf course architects are stereotypically viewed as masochists. In reality, we try to provide a collection of doable shots for all levels of golfers … well, most of the time. Whether felt “in the gut” way back when, or known because of recent scientific study, we understand the relationship between golfers and the course.

Golf course architects are fond of saying “there are no rules,” but some general golf course architectural principles have developed over decades. These are often based on golf certain physics truisms, the notion of “proportionality” and knowledge that golfers prefer to shoot a decent score, meaning we recognize:

• The relationship of shot difficulty to shot length (longer is harder)
• That punishment should fit the crime
• That shot difficulty should relate to success on the previous shot.

Allow me to explain.

The relationship of shot difficulty to shot length

In general, longer shots are harder than shorter shots, because:

• A 200-yard shot 5 degrees off line flies twice as far off line than a shot 5 degrees off line from 100 yards.
• Lower lofted clubs are harder to hit than higher lofted clubs.

Several design axioms spring from this, including theories that:

• Longer approach shots need bigger greens (and wider fairway approaches) than shorter approach shots.
• Longer shots also receive deeper greens, because average golfers get less back spin on lower trajectory shots.

Similarly, greens (and fairways) should be wider on uphill shots, or shots into the wind, as head winds deflect shots off line to a greater degree. Further, many believe greens on long iron approach shots should, compared to shorter approach shots, be/have:

• Flatter front to back to allow shots to roll to back pin positions
• More gently contoured
• Lower to the ground, to allow for lower loft, roll-up shots.

Punishment should correlate to the degree of miss

We hear this from tour pros and low handicappers, who expect systematic reward and punishment, leading to things like:

• Intermediate rough cut.
• Flat green side sand bunkers with steep (and tightly mown) banks. Eliminating sloped sand near the green reduces plugged lies for shots missing the green by 10 feet, while a 20- foot miss finds flat sand and a good lie.

This isn’t a new thought. Donald Ross built fairway sand bunkers that were deeper on the outside edge to punish wider misses more harshly than shots that narrowly missed the fairway and found the inside edge of the bunker. However, Ross was also careful to sharply slope the last few feet of sand all around the bunker, believing it was unfair for any shot to have randomly have an unplayable lie up against the bunker lip. Historically, architects build deeper green side bunkers than fairway bunkers, reasoning golfers will use high lofted sand wedges.

Shot difficulty should relate to success on the previous shot

This is a tenant of classic strategy in that a golfer who plays a higher risk shot off the tee is usually given the advantage of an easier second shot. It is often applied more generally in design for balance.

For example, one architect would rank the tee shot, approach and first putt as easy (1), medium (2) or hard (3). He believed that most par 4 holes should have rankings around 5-7, for mid-difficulty, but with a mix of where the difficulty lies. Holes would be too hard if the shots ranked 3-3-3=9 or too easy if ranked 1-1-1=3. He would only design a select few holes at 4 or 8, either when the land demanded it or specifically to create harder or easier holes for variety.

Some architects believe difficulty should generally increase as the round progresses, starting with an easy opening hole, and finishing with more difficult holes to help determine the better player in a match. Others strive for some rhythm and balance of holes, avoiding any stretch of extremely hard or easy holes for variety.

None of these general rules trumps the architect’s cardinal rule of relating the golf hole to the land itself. It is rarely satisfactory to put “five pounds of green on a four-pound green site.” Having a somewhat random mix of greens, and perhaps a touch of whimsy, is just as important as any hard and fast rule or theoretical design axiom.