Superintendent's Forum

what are your greatest challenges heading into the 2006 golf season?

Ron Pusateri • St. Clair Country Club • Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania

St. Clair is a private country club with a large membership whose handicap ratings represent a wide range of golfing abilities. Pusateri, who is beginning his second season at the club, says his greatest challenge is to find a happy medium for course conditions and playability.

“The club wanted championship conditions,” he explains, “but I learned last year that taking that approach didn’t please everyone.”

Pusateri’s first task was to firm up the greens with an aggressive topdressing program. Going into his first winter the greens were covered with sand. By the time the staff was ready to aerify last spring, the sand was almost gone. Aerification was done with 3/8-inch tines and a close 1 1/2- x 1 1/2-inch spacing. Later, a dry-jet process was used to punch sand directly into the surface in two directions with 3-inch x 3-inch spacing. A drill-and-fill process was completed twice in fall using 3/4-inch drill bits at a depth of 12 inches.

“Conditioning the greens was a big step for the club,” he says. “Our next task is to condition the rough to improve quality and make it more manageable. We’re accomplishing that with overseeding and a strong fertility program.”

To determine the right balance for course conditions, Pusateri met with the green committee, golf committee and women’s golf association and talked with many members.

“I’m taking all the comments, criticisms and suggestions and am putting them together to formulate a plan. We’ll go from there, making sure not to sacrifice agronomic practices.”

 

Reese Patterson  • Grand Cypress Golf Club • Orlando, Florida

The New Course at the 45-hole facility is a links-style design. The biggest challenge is a massive weed problem.

“We maintain 100 acres of fairway at 3/8 inch the entire year,” Patterson says. “Goose grass just consumes the golf course, and it gets much worse every year due to chemical resistance. It’s a very, very hardy plant and seems to be mutating into a hardier, more resistant form. We’ve yet to find a chemical that can selectively kill it. Because it covers more area each year, we’re forced to use chemicals more hazardous to Bermuda grass. We can control regular goose grass with herbicides, but as the mutation continues to grow, it literally takes over the course because of the height-of-cut, grassy mounds with weeds and seed stalks, and winds that blow across the course unchecked.”

This year Patterson plans to time his preemergent chemical applications differently.

“We’re going to close the window a bit,” he explains. “We’re going to come inside the 90- day interval to prevent the goose grass from getting so much germination that it’s too late when we put down our second application. We’re even considering moving up our aerification dates a couple of weeks. When we open up holes, we get a huge push of the weed. We’ll adjust the timing of pre-emergent applications and get more aggressive with our postemergent before the weed gets out of hand.”

 

Jeff Sutherland • Pacific Dunes • Bandon, Oregon

Pacific Dunes will host the Curtis Cup Match this year. The event pits the best female players from the United States against a team of players from Great Britain and Ireland. The greatest challenge for superintendent Jeff Sutherland will be keeping up with wear on this all-fescue links course.

“Prior to the matches we will have our normal amount of guest play, which is a lot of golfers,” he says. “Fescue doesn’t fill in quickly like other grasses, so we’ll be spending lots of time filling fairway divots by hand with sand and seed. It’s tedious, but necessary, because fescue doesn’t ‘creep’ like bentgrass or Poa annua. We’ll be able to control tees a little better by using a mat-type netting.”

The USGA asked Sutherland to define the edges of a few bunkers that bleed into dunes, which could create rules issues. Sutherland enjoys the challenge of preparing for tournaments.

“We don’t go beyond the way we prepare the course for our guests,” he says. “I don’t do anything different. I’d like to think we’re giving golfers tournament conditions every day. Links courses like ours are difficult enough to play, and hiking up green speed, for example, would make the course nearly impossible. We keep our maintenance practices steady from day to day. In our minds, we’re always preparing for a tournament.”