La Quinta - Doug Anderson walked through the field of puddles, mud and brown sprigs of Bermuda grass.
Bending down every few feet, Anderson looked for signs of new life on what will become the second fairway of the SilverRock Resort golf course.
"It's starting to take," Anderson said, pointing to tender green shoots of grass springing up. "We can start backing off on the water now."
For Anderson, the superintendent for the city-developed SilverRock course in La Quinta, and the rest of the development staff at SilverRock, all of the construction work over the last seven months has been aimed at assuring those little green shoots were growing by September.
The goal was to have all 130 acres of the course growing at least some young grass plants by the end of this month to ensure a January 2005 opening.
The success of the SilverRock team in establishing the new course's Bermuda turf will be seen in the coming months. If the grassing that started in July works, all 18 holes will be lush and green for the opening tee shots.
If the final acres of Bermuda grass aren't established well enough, the course's turf may be patchy and sparse in January and could see more bare patches when the heat returns and the rye grass dies out next spring.
That, in turn, could affect the quality of the turf when the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic is played on the course on national television in January 2006.
"It would have been nice to start our first grassing in May," said Dennis Wesseldine, a project manager at SilverRock for construction management company Heinbuch Golf. "So this has been a real challenge."
Overseeding worries
Every course in the Coachella Valley faces the uncertainties of overseeding, the transition from summertime Bermuda grass to wintertime rye. But new courses face the task of a grow-in, or establishing new, healthy Bermuda turf before fall overseeding. This is the first grow-in project for Anderson, who has worked at other desert golf courses such as Indian Wells Country Club and The Vintage Club.
"It's nothing that I ever anticipated. It's like one continuous overseeding program," Anderson said. "You go through an overseeding and it's a pain, depending on how many holes you have. But it's just six or seven weeks. This is just constant. It's similar practices, similar philosophies, but just constant, relentless."
Construction at SilverRock didn't start until February, so the land wasn't ready for the first grass until July. That left only a four-month window for Anderson and his crew to complete their grow-in, a process most new courses perform in six months.
SilverRock's Bermuda base is in various stages of growth as September ends. At the southern end of the project, grass planted in July is already thick and virtually ready for play. On the northern end of the project, grass planted earlier this month is still establishing a root system and trying to cover the ground through Bermuda grass' characteristic creeping nature.
About 28 acres of the course, including the entire third, fourth and fifth holes, were sodded with mature turf, a move project managers always admitted was a possibility to meet the September deadline.
"If you look at some of the holes done in July and August, you can't tell the difference between the sod and the (new grass)," Wesseldine said.
At new courses, heavily sloped areas around bunkers are normally sodded because new grass plants can be washed off the slope and never take root.
Bermuda's growing characteristics are to creep along the ground in growths called stolons and just under the ground in growths called rhizomes.
To plant new Bermuda grass at SilverRock, stolons were shredded from mature turf, then mixed with a solution of water and fertilizers. That mixture is then sprayed across the land at a rate of about 300 bushels, or about 2,700 gallons of the mix, per acre.
Once on the ground, the stolons establish a root system while producing more stolons across the ground. Every inch or so, the stolon produces an internode, or a kind of joint that produces new grass leaves and root systems. The result should be a carpet of turf and a solid root system.
SilverRock's main grass for fairways and rough is called tifsport, the latest generation of Bermuda which features small stems and leaves, promoting a better playing surface than older Bermudas.
"I'm kind of excited by it," Anderson said of the tifsport. "It is going to be a good grass. With the nutrient levels we have now, and they kind of fluctuate, it looks good. It's a uniform."
"It's claim to fame is it stays greener longer and it greens up sooner," Wesseldine said of the tifsport.
SilverRock's greens will be covered by a commonly used recent variation called tifdwarf.
Add water
Nutrient levels and water also are key to a grow-in. Through fertilizers, Wesseldine said the course is receiving one pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of turf per week. Once mature, the course will receive one pound of nitrogen every six to eight weeks.
In addition, the grow-in requires about twice the water a mature course needs. At SilverRock, that means up to 2 million gallons of water a day in the hot summer months of the grow-in. Underwatering will hurt the ability of the grasses to germinate, while overwatering could cause ruts and unevenness in the ground.
A warm October, particularly at night, will help SilverRock's turf grow strong before the required overseed to cool-weather rye grass. Ironically, just as the Bermuda grows strong, Anderson and his staff will force the grass into dormancy for the transition to rye.
Many local courses begin their overseeding in September in an effort to re-open in November. Since SilverRock won't open until late January, Anderson can watch his Bermuda base grow in throughout October before starting the rye transition in November.
Getting the rye established won't be any easier for Anderson's staff. Unlike Bermuda, which goes dormant in cool weather but springs back to life in the heat, rye grass dies out in the summer heat and must be replaced each fall.
Once the Bermuda goes dormant in a few weeks, the SilverRock crew will toss literally tons of rye seed onto the course, hoping it will germinate in the cooler nighttime temperatures.
Like all desert courses, the SilverRock staff wants their course to be as green and perfect as possible for players this winter. But Wesseldine said producing that green grass can actually hurt the agronomy of a course.
"The problem is that in our valley, the competition is so strong to get lush, green beautiful golf courses that they actually do damage to the Bermuda," Wesseldine said. "That causes problems in the spring, and that's what people call a bad transition."
Source: The Desert Sun