Bartram Trail Golf Club superintendent Jeff Lloyd went through his normal regimen of aerifying and fertilizing the course's bentgrass greens in early June.
Two days later -- with the onset of a string of days on which the temperature soared between 97 and 100 degrees -- Lloyd said one of the greens had turned almost burgundy and was dying.
"As a superintendent, it's like watching your kid drown," he said. "I ran back and got a hose and tried to flush it through."
It didn't work, and other greens at the public course in Columbia County were also in trouble. By the end of the month, the club made the decision to kill the damaged greens and replace the grass with a strain of Bermuda known as MiniVerde.
Bartram Trail's story is not uncommon. A summer of scorching heat has taken its toll on golf courses throughout the country, and particularly in the Southeast. Several courses in Georgia and the Carolinas have struggled to keep their greens playable, and some have lost them altogether.
