Lee Miller of Gateway National Golf Club in Madison, Ill., deals with the twin challenges faced by most golf course superintendents: geography and weather. His links-style, public course lies almost in the shadow of the soaring St. Louis Gateway Arch. It also lies squarely in the transition zone, a fact that influences almost every aspect of Miller’s turf care regimen.
Designed in 1997 by noted architect Keith Foster, the 18-hole course bills itself as a place to play “golf as it was meant to be played.” In this case, that means a stunning setting created to echo the Scottish Highlands, with a backdrop of windswept and rolling hills, gently sloping land and lush, tall grasses punctuated by lakes. Gateway National is also the only public course with bentgrass fairways, tees and greens within hundreds of miles of St. Louis.
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Single focus, single grass
The fact that Gateway National is all bentgrass and much further south than most bentgrass courses, means many challenges, from watering issues to diseases like Pythium and dollar spot.
“Our location means we have a longer season for bentgrass than you usually find, and so we’re spending more on everything - more fungicides, more fertilizers, the whole nine yards,” says Miller, who has been superintendent since the course opened. “Honestly we’d save a lot of money if we went to another type of grass, like zoysia, which is the turf most courses have in this area.”
But Miller insists his players really enjoy the chance to play on bentgrass, and so the course hangs onto this unique selling point. Though it is a public course, it does have a number of yearly pass holders, many of whom have been playing the course for the past eight or nine years. Miller calls them the “Gateway Group” and most of them are die-hard fans of bentgrass, despite the difficulty in keeping it in prime condition.
“I look at it as an extra challenge to keep alive during the summer. It’s like a baby you have to watch all the time and coddle,” he jokes.
Forgetting about grubs
One of the toughest foes he confronted when he first arrived at Gateway was ataenius grubs, which seem to really like the native soil in the St. Louis area. Because of its location, Gateway National previously suffered through three hatches of ataenius each year, some as late as October.
“The damage they were doing to the bentgrass was tremendous. I used to spend a lot of time scouting the course, looking for signs that the grubs were back in one area or another, from one hatching to the next. In addition to eating our roots, they were also eating up a lot of my time,” he adds.
Miller tried various products and kept up his scouting routine in an attempt to catch the problem soon after each grub hatching. Several years ago, he began using Merit insecticide from Bayer Environmental Science, and turned the tide on ataenius grubs.
He applies the product in May (May 18, according to his precise schedule) at the rate of 1.6 ounces per 8,250 square feet, a rate that he feels eliminates any chance of a wide-scale return of the grub problem. Consequently, Miller’s scouting trips have fallen by the wayside.
“It’s been years since I’ve had to worry about anything more than just a tiny population of grubs late in the season, usually in October. I’ve actually lost most of my knowledge about ataenius grubs, and it’s one headache I’m happy to lose. I have other issues to worry about.”
A Long Year of Mowing
The Gateway National grounds crew starts mowing in March and keeps at it until late November because of the extended bentgrass season. According to Miller, “it makes for a very long year.”
He’s also a big fan of aerification, making wall-to-wall hollow-core treatments twice each year, once in the spring and again in the fall. Once a year, either in the spring or fall, Miller turns to a Verti-Drain branded aerator with solid tines to loosen up the hardpan layers where compaction is an issue.
“We’ll go about eight inches down to get air and water into the soil profile,” he says. “In my opinion, any aerification helps.”
The real challenge is handling the cleanup after aerification. “My boss used to hate it when I aerified,” notes Miller. “Now they’re accustomed to the process and, since my crew has the cleanup down to a science and gets the course back to looking good faster, they don’t complain much about it these days.”
Miller enjoys is the challenge of his job at Gateway National, particularly because the region is not known for bentgrass courses.
“I always figured I’d be managing the turf on a zoysia course around here, not a bentgrass one,” he adds. “But over the years, I’ve really learned the lesson that Mother Nature is my real boss and I have to work with her the best I can.”
