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 From the News Desk...Greens of envyby John ReitmanWith the 2012 U.S. Open approaching like a downhill putt, one might jump to the conclusion recent changes completed on the Lake Course at The Olympic Club in San Francisco were in direct response to the Championship. And one would be wrong. Changes at the 45-hole club include converting all 18 putting surfaces on the Lake Course from Poa annua to a creeping bentgrass mix, recontouring three of the greens, lengthening and moving a par 3 hole, and renovating a majority of the tee complexes to provide better footing for members and their guests. “It wasn’t so much for the U.S. Open,” said Lake Course superintendent Brian Koffler. “It is for our members – to provide them with a superior playing surface they deserve.” Playability on the Lake Course’s Poa annua greens – which average 4,300 square feet – was not up to snuff for a club nestled in an area flush with some of the world’s finest courses. The culprit was the stem gall nematode, or anguina pacificae, a geographic-specific pest with a voracious appetite for Poa annua turf. In response to the nematode problem, director of golf course operations, Pat Finlen, CGCS, sought to upgrade putting conditions for the members, and he wanted the project completed early enough so it would not conflict with preparations for the Open. In fact, Finlen first brought the matter to his committee about five years ago.  “The nematode problem was just extreme,” said project architect Bill Love. “Pat knew something needed to be done, and he didn’t want it to butt up against the Championship schedule.”
The project, completed in late May, included adding slope to the putting surface on No. 18, and reworking the 7th and 15th greens so their overall design was “consistent with the original concept of the golf course,” Love said. The No. 18 green came under scrutiny during the 1998 U.S. Open won by Lee Janzen for being too difficult. The slope of the putting surface at the time made it difficult for the USGA to find adequate pin placements, so it was reworked after the tournament, and subsequently criticized for being too easy. “After ’98, the club took much of the slope out of it,” Koffler said. “Players said in 1998 that part of the challenge was just getting the ball onto the green, and the rest of the challenge was getting the ball into the hole. After the Open, you could two-putt from anywhere on that green.” The par-3 eighth hole was moved to the right of its former location, with the green set down in a valley, stretching the hole from 137 yards to as much as 205 yards, Koffler said. “One of the concerns of our members was the par 3s left a bit to be desired,” Koffler said. “Moving (No. 8) to the right added variety and length.” The new location also utilizes Olympic’s clubhouse as a backdrop. “This added much more visual interest to the hole,” Love said. It also opened No. 7 for much-needed changes, including moving the green 16 yards as well as removing a shelf from its previous design. No. 15 also was reworked because architecturally it failed to fit in with the rest of the golf course Love said. Love noted how he and Finlen poured through hundreds of vintage photographs of the 1929 Willie Watson design during the planning stages of the project. Drawing accurate references from some of the early photos was a challenge, but Love and Finlen were able to get an accurate visual from many of the images. “We didn’t bring the golf course back to when (Olympic) was built. We couldn’t go back to the original design,” Love said, noting the difficulty in accurately discerning contours and edges from some of those early photos. “But we were able to go back to the ’50s and ’60s and use these photographs as references.” There was no similar template for combating the stem gall nematode.  Until 30 years ago, no one on the West Coast was familiar with anguina pacificae or the damage it could cause. But since it was discovered in Poa annua samples collected in 1978 from Pebble Beach, anguina pacificae has become infamous on golf courses throughout its natural range, which extends along the California coastline from Monterey peninsula northward past San Francisco.
Growing to a length of less than 2 mm, anguina pacificae can gather in various lifecycle stages by the hundreds inside a single plant stem forming a gall or an abnormal shape that turfgrass consultant Mark Mahady likened to the bulb on a green onion. Their presence causes water, nutrient and photosynthate deprivation and eventually kills the individual stem. Have enough nematodes and gall in a Poa green, and the dying plants can cause severe bumpiness. No one knows for certain how or why anguina pacificae has become such a widespread problem in the past 30 years, but it is bad enough that many other high-end facilities in the San Francisco area already have converted from Poa to bentgrass. Mahady, who is based in Salinas, has conducted a great deal of research on anguina pacificae. He says the pests typically are found first in collars or surrounds, and move about the course through surface irrigation film. Their increasing presence could be related to the discontinued use of some fungicides, or lower height of cut demanded by contemporary golfers. “That probably has contributed to it, but nobody knows,” Mahady said. “We do see them in fairways and tees where height of cut is not as short, and the damage is not as severe. “I tend to think that the mercury-based fungicides we were using were pretty hard on them. But nobody has done any research on that.” What Mahady does know is that the damage caused by stem gall nematodes can be devastating and short of converting from Poa to bentgrass there is little anyone can do to control them. “It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve seen in Poa,” he said. “The margin for error on greens already is between nil and none. Pretty much the only solution is to go to creeping bentgrass.” According to research conducted by Mahady and others, no pesticide products currently available have shown an ability to control anguina pacificae. The only product that has worked was Nemacur, whose product ion was stopped more than two years ago. By then, discussions about improvements to the Lake Course already were in motion. Finlen first approached membership about changes to the Lake Course about five years ago. Eventually he was able to convince members to allow him to convert two greens and the practice green on the club’s Ocean Course to bentgrass – Dominant Plus and Dominant Extreme – sort of as an in-house trial. The results of that project were enough to convince the green committee that bentgrass was the best option for the Lake Course as well, Finlen said. After discussions last summer with Leah Brilman, Ph.D., of Seed Research of Oregon and Larry Stowell and Wendy Gelernter of PACE Turf in San Diego, the club decided on a 60/40 combination of 007 and Tyee creeping bentgrasses, both of which were developed by plant breeders from Rutgers University. SRO’s 007 were chosen for its enhanced disease resistance and ability to thrive in a variety of climates, while Tyee was selected for its visual quality and winter hardiness. Koffler recalled that education of the club’s members on the benefits of converting to bentgrass at first was a challenge for Finlen and Love. In particular, he remembered a day when Finlen, Love and members of the green committee toured the course and analyzed each green, ultimately deciding that Nos. 7, 8, 15 and 18 showed the most room for improvement. “They were guarded,” Koffler said of the members. “They were completely content with the majority of the putting surfaces.” Eventually, the green committee took the matter to the club’s full membership. Looking back, Koffler is amazed at the amount of detail the project entailed. Crews from Frontier Golf of Jones Mills, Pa. , plotted each green with 2,500 to 4,000 GPS points to ensure every contour and edge was replaced exactly as it was prior to construction. They then cored each surface to a depth of 16 inches and cut in subsurface drainage in the way of 4-inch, perforated pipe in a classic herringbone design, Koffler said. “This really gave us a great opportunity to address any drainage issues we had on the golf course,” Koffler said.  Each green then was filled with 4 inches of gravel before the greens mix was added in and the project topped off in March with 100,000 square feet of sod grown under contract by West Coast Turf.
Because of the small size of the Lake Course greens and the amount of play the course receives (about 35,000 rounds per year), golfer traffic during the first year was one of Koffler’s greatest concerns. As a result, he and Finlen decided not to push the new surfaces early on. They have been solid tining once per month with quarter-inch tines on a John Deere Aercore 800, and recently raised mowing height to 0.125 inches, up from their summer height of 0.100. “Members are asking when they’ll be faster,” Koffler said. “But we want to play it safe this first year and see how the bent reacts in this microclimate. The site is on the east slope of a hill, so sunlight is not great anyway, and in the afternoon it’s even worse.” Koffler’s pedigree, which includes working for Mark Michaud at Shinneock Hills Golf Club, Tom Huesgen, CGCS then at Pebble Beach, and Jeff Markow, CGCS at Cypress Point Club, prepared him well for a project of such magnitude. “The importance of the project was getting everything back to where it needed to be,” Koffler said. “But you always have to challenge yourself and learn from people above you to further your career.” Love called the project one of the most enjoyable on which he was worked. “One of my favorite comments was from the guests of one of the green committee members who had not been to the course in several years. He said that it looked good, but other than the obvious change on No. 8 he was not sure what we did. That made me feel great,” Love said. “I want to do architectural work that blends in with the architecture already here. Olympic is one of the most famous clubs in the world. They’re not looking for me to come in here and put my imprint on this golf course. I am here to make minor enhancements to change the playability of the greens, not change the character of the golf course. I think we were able to achieve that.” |
In other news... Study examines spring pre-stress fertility programs Research finds no correlation between biostimulant applications before spring core cultivation and recovery. Posted: 09/02/2010 Read more » Aquatrols, TurfNet present Water Week The series of five Webinars is aimed at helping superintendents manage water and soils more efficiently. Posted: 09/01/2010 Read more » News and people briefs Registration opens soon for Irrigation Show, Briggs & Stratton elects new chairman, FMC taps new director for professional solutions division Posted: 09/01/2010 Read more » GCSAA selects firm in search for new CEO Kansas City-based company will open search process for Mark Woodward's successor in October. Posted: 08/31/2010 Read more » Water foul! Research shows that droppings from non-migratory geese on turf can result in nitrogen runoff into adjacent bodies of water. Posted: 08/26/2010 Read more » Complete news index » |
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