Courtesy of Lee Carr
Bella Ridge Golf Club, in Johnstown, Colorado, is owned by the Podtburg family and opened for play in 2025 after starting construction in the summer of 2023. On land that was formerly a dairy farm, superintendent Mitch Bryden led the grow in of this Troon-managed property. Tees, fairways and the rough are a 90/10 blend of Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass, the greens are 007XL bentgrass, approaches are Dominator Blend bentgrass and natives are sheep and hard fescues.
Everything was seeded for this 18-hole layout, using drop spreaders on greens, approaches and fairway perimeters, and drill seeding the majority of the property. Height of cut goals include .450” or lower for tees and fairways, though it is currently .475”. The rough will be at 1.75”, greens at .100” and approaches at .200”.
During a grow-in, the first cut depends largely on how well the seed germinated. “One issue we dealt with was that the soil was strawed and crimped, which is great for erosion control, and not so great for introducing weed seeds,” Bryden says. “Once we saw about 90 percent coverage on each hole, we dialed the water back to overnight only and started with a rough HOC at 2”. From there, we mowed until the weeds were mostly eradicated and our equipment manager would go to town adjusting reels, mowing regularly until we reached our desired HOC. The architect, Art Schaupeter, introduced the fairway and tee lines, and we split the mowers off to fairway HOC and rough HOC. This was an extensive process as we had many holes that were more established than the newer seed, so it was a constant battle of swapping heights.”
Preferences for playability, pace of play and various turf types are taken into account. “We don't want to take off more than ⅓ of a blade of grass at a time, so we use a prism gauge to check for the HOC,” Bryden says. “Our equipment manager, Jay Rains, would lower the HOC no more than ⅓ and then we would turn around and mow again, slowly dropping heights. Bentgrass likes to be cut low and spreads better laterally that way, so we made a decision early on to start greens at .200” and approaches at .300” and drop from there. Again, we battled the HOC adjustment process as more mature bent was mowed at different heights than the newest. For fairway/tee HOC, we had to find the sweet spot, .500”, between shaggy fairways, and needing to mow too frequently.”
It’s a team effort to decide the HOC, among Bryden, Troon agronomy and operations, and factoring in some knowledge gleaned from local university academics. “I partner with Jay to try to minimize the number of adjustments he has to make,” Bryden says.
“All in, we factor in pace of play and what is best for the turf to decide ideal heights. We tested out rough initially starting at 2” but dropping it by .25” gives it the look we want, plus speeds up pace of play. Fairways initially started at .700” because we didn't have enough mowers to maintain .500”. Now that we're open, all equipment is on board and we can maintain that half-inch cut.”
It’s worthwhile experimenting with different heights in different areas of the course. Climate, weather and soils play a part. “The agronomy team here at Bella Ridge has done an incredible job taking this place from seed to opening,” Bryden says.
It is great to see what two years of effort has yielded, including the ways they can continue to refine the HOC for healthy turf.
Lee Carr is a northeast Ohio-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.
