Dormant turf can be an excellent playing surface for golfers. However, the color can be off-putting for those who equate toasty brown Bermudagrass with dead or unhealthy turf.
Superintendents throughout the transition zone and parts of the Southeast have largely had two options to provide golfers with an aesthetically pleasing green surface during winter — overseeding and painting dormant Bermudagrass turf.
Each option has its benefits, but painting greens has largely supplanted overseeding of dormant Bermudagrass during winter.
Painting reduces cost because dormant turf does not require mowing or fertilizer and needs very little water during winter, while still providing a dark green color that gives golfers a target while debunking the golfer myth that dormant and dead are interchangeable.
Painting greens also makes it easier to clean up winter weeds before spring green-up, because dormant turf allows for large-scale application of non-selective herbicides. Such applications are not possible in actively growing ryegrass.
The competition when transitioning out of ryegrass can also affect Bermudagrass conditions after winter.
"Anything that is overseeded with ryegrass can delay green-up," said Grady Miller, Ph.D., of North Carolina State University. "If it is a long, wet, cool spring.
"You also have wear and tear, because with painting you don't have a wearable surface. Painting provides some advantages, but there is some competition, too."
Miller told of a sports turf manager in North Carolina who historically overseeds each year, but is skipping it this year because weed issues have become so severe.
"He didn't overseed because he couldn't contend with the weeds, so he's taking a year off," Miller said.
"There are trade-offs. There are some big trade-offs."
Paul Carter, CGCS at The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay in Tennessee, has been painting greens since converting the greens from bentgrass to Champion Bermudagrass about 20 years ago.
"If you overseed, you have to do so much work to get seed down and established," Carter said. "It's disruptive if you just want color. Everybody around here is going to painting."
For the past two years, Carter also has been painting fairways, which are 419 Bermudagrass, and today paints everything except tees and rough.
Painting fairways is done mostly for the benefit of his crew, and not for golfers. After months of golfers beating down dormant turf in the fairways and rough, finding that line between them in spring can be difficult.
"As long as we give them a defined edge, they can see where that fairway line is," he said. "If we don't keep that line out there, the fairway units are all over the place in spring. They don't know where to go."
Painting reduces cost because dormant turf does not require mowing or fertilizer and needs very little water during winter, while still providing a dark green color for golfers.
Deciding on paints vs. pigments, which shade of green and what brand to purchase will vary from course to course based on goals, needs and conditions at each property.
The cost to paint varies, but an average, according to Miller, is about $200 per acre. That price translates to about $500 for 2.5 acres of greens. It typically takes two or three applications to get through the winter, he said.
Much of the Bermuda at Bear Trace still is green. Carter had hoped to paint this week, but rain has stalled the process.
"Two times should be plenty," he said. "If we get on it before Christmas, we'll be good until early February or late January. Then we'll do it again, and that should be enough to pull us through until spring."
Although many properties throughout the transition zone are now painting, many others in the resort market, namely locations like Myrtle Beach, continue to overseed because courses there rely on the shoulder seasons of fall and spring for their revenue, not summer when Bermuda is at its peak.
Of the transition zone courses that are overseeding, some are seeding at a lower rate — 10 pounds or 8 pounds per acre rather than 15 pounds — and using just a little paint to fill in. Still others are painting greens, and maybe fairways, while also overseeding tees because of the beating they take throughout the golfing season.
"A lot of them can't handle the wear and tear if they are left dormant," Miller said.
Carter has realized some unintended benefits of spraying.
Last year, he ran out of paint, leaving a single strip on the edge of the No. 3 fairway unpainted. When he applied a non-selective herbicide to the dormant turf to clean up weeds, he noticed that the herbicide in the painted areas was more effective than in the areas where no colorant had been applied.
"It did not kill the Poa annua in that strip," he said, "as well as it did in the painted area."
Jim Brosnan, Ph.D., of the University of Tennessee said that enhanced weed control could be attributed to the heat-retention ability of darker painted turf.
"There's some evidence to show that painting slightly increases canopy temperature, particularly in early spring when one would make a Roundup app for Poa control," Brosnan said via email. "It's possible that this elevated temperature led to Poa plants that were more actively growing and therefore absorbed the herbicide more readily.
"I'm not sure that concept has ever been fully vetted in trial work, but anecdotally, I've seen it in the field."
