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What can brown do for (or to) you?
A look at the brown turf experience at three golf courses.
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At municipal Saddle Rock GC in Aurora, Colo., a severely limited water supply and restrictions stemming from droughts in 2002 and 2003 caused a drop in rounds. Photos courtesy of Saddle Rock GC |
A little over a year ago, the Independent, a United Kingdom-based newspaper, opened an article about golf with a bold statement: “Greens are to become browner in a drive to make golf kinder to the environment. In a revolutionary move, the rulers of golf are telling courses around the world to become more environmentally friendly in order to…cope with global warming.” Was the R&A really asking golf courses to serve up the oxymoron of brown greens? Yes and no.
“We’re trying to promote sustainable golf course development and design,” says Steve Isaac, assistant director of golf course management for the R&A. “We’ve been encouraging golf courses to be managed in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible since the mid-1980s. Our golf course committee formed in 2002 and that has formalized our approach on these issues. That approach has to take into account future conditions of climate change.”
While global climate change was the motivating factor for advocating brown greens in this instance, it’s just one of several factors that might cause a golf course to go browner. Environmental restrictions, particularly water use restrictions or limitations, also figure prominently.
Regardless of the cause, browner golf courses could bring vocal complaints from golfers. Their demands for aesthetics and playing conditions often dictate what is expected of a superintendent. And because players equate the greenest golf courses with the best playing conditions, the situation is ripe for conflict should things take a turn toward brown.
So will brown ever be considered beautiful by today’s and tomorrow’s golfers?
‘A major problem’
Brown versus green is a tension worsened by the Augusta Effect. Golfers see a highly conditioned golf course on TV and expect the same at their home course without understanding what that means for the superintendent in terms of management.
“It’s still a major problem,” says Jim Snow, national director of the USGA’s Green Section. “Most golfers have no idea what they’re asking the superintendent to do. They see a course like Winged Foot manicured to the nth degree for the event, and they think that’s what golf courses look like all year long. They don’t have a clue about the needs of a golf course.”
Whether golfers understand those needs or not, it comes down to expectations and what’s considered acceptable. When it comes to accepting conditions other than those we see on TV, the R&A’s Isaac draws a strong distinction between golfers on either side of the pond.
“There’s a great difference between European golfers and United States golfers in their acceptance of playing conditions,” he explains. “In Great Britain and Ireland, where we have a tradition based on the origins of golf played on links, we have always had a great acceptance for conditions other than the verdant green.”
Snow disagrees with such a characterization. To him, it’s not a question of color, of green versus brown. It’s a question of playing conditions.
“People from the U.K. come over here and chastise us for water and pesticide use,” he says. “I finally went over to the northwest coast of Scotland. They didn’t have fairway irrigation. I was amazed at how good those fairways were without any water. They were brown, but they had an outstanding playing surface. The grass was there, and it was cut closely. You couldn’t have asked for anything better in terms of playability. We’re going for that same playability, but it takes water and pesticides to do it. If we did what they did, we wouldn’t have off-color grass. We’d have no grass.”
In the U.S., the U.K. or anywhere else, brown is clearly not the norm. But it may become an increasing reality for superintendents. Whether precipitated by global climate change, limited availability of water for irrigation or some other reason, a browner golf course is a scenario worth considering.
Although examples aren’t around every corner, there are golf courses in the U.S. that are browner than your average course. Let’s look at three golf courses that have already “gone brown” for three different reasons, how their superintendents dealt with the shift, and how their golfers and members responded.
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Brown greens and fairways — and turf damage as seen here — may be the norm in the future as environmental and water conservation issues become increasingly hot topics. |
Brown by drought
In Colorado, the years 2002 and 2003 are remembered as two of the hottest and driest in memory. The beginnings of a drought were seen and felt in 1999, but by 2002 the situation had become serious. Most of Colorado’s water supply, including golf course irrigation water, is supplied by snowmelt from the mountains. But on April 1, 2002, Colorado’s snowpack measured just 53 percent of average — the second lowest snowpack in 40 years, and roughly half the snowpack levels for the 10 years immediately preceding 2002.
Even so, as April marched on, superintendents and Coloradans in general were hopeful that the spring season would bring rain. For the balance of Colorado’s water not supplied by snowmelt, 20 percent of storms drop 80 percent of the water. In essence, a few big storms that drop a lot of rain could have gone a long way toward easing the drought pressure. But as spring transitioned into summer, no storms came, and by June, severe drought was widespread and massive forest fires sprung up in the foothills west of Denver.
In response to a severely limited water supply, golf courses in the state drastically cut their water use. Courses conserved water through a variety of methods: wetting agents, eliminating irrigation in some areas, reducing irrigation and hand watering. Those practices caused a drop of 226 million gallons, or 1.5 percent, in water used on golf courses compared with 2001 water use, according to the 2004 Golf Economic Impact Study conducted by researchers at Colorado State University.
Researchers further estimated that had water conservation practices not been implemented, water use for 2002 would have increased by 25 percent over 2001 levels. The net water use reduction then was a whopping 26.5 percent.
What the study didn’t highlight, though, were the mandatory irrigation restrictions enforced by Colorado municipalities up and down the Front Range, the area comprising Denver and the Interstate 25 corridor that runs north-south along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. By October, courses were permitted to water only greens and tees. It left the turf thirsty in extremely dry conditions, with widespread browning on courses throughout the Front Range.
One such case was Saddle Rock Golf Course in Aurora, a suburb of Denver. The municipal course sees roughly 40,000 rounds a year and caters to the average public course golfer — not high-end and not low-end. Of the course’s 240 acres, 115 are irrigated in a normal year. But 2002 and 2003 weren’t normal years, and the course went brown.
“We suffered,” says superintendent Joe McCleary, CGCS. “Our golfers couldn’t accept a course that has a significant amount of brown fairways and rough surrounding greens.” So, golfers left, headed for literally greener pastures on golf courses that irrigated with effluent, which wasn’t restricted during the drought.
The end result was what McCleary, a 22-year GCSAA member, calls a “drought hangover,” the lag time between when a drought ends and when the golfers return after they’ve left because of playing conditions brought on during the drought. “It’s like going to a restaurant and having a bad meal,” McCleary explains. “You’re reluctant to return.”
The golfers eventually did come back, but not before the city felt the financial fallout of reduced rounds.
Environmental concerns
On Martha’s Vineyard, the famed island seven miles south of Massachusetts in the Atlantic Ocean, another golf course went brown for a different reason. It wasn’t drought, but rather environmental concerns: The island’s water is supplied by a single underground aquifer. When the Vineyard Golf Club — a 238-acre links-style course — was in its planning stages, island residents had two primary concerns: protecting water quality in the aquifer and the golf course not “using a monumental amount of water,” says Jeff Carlson, CGCS. Residents didn’t want their only water source sucked dry.
The Vineyard officially opened for play in May 2002 with Carlson, who recently was announced as the 2008 recipient of GCSAA’s President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship, at the helm as superintendent. From the outset, his water use mandate was clear: 150,000 gallons a day, 180 days a year, 27 million gallons total. That’s what he was allotted to pull from the aquifer. What is pumped from the aquifer goes to a holding pond, which gives Carlson the option to irrigate more than 150,000 gallons a day, recognizing that doing so would lower the level of the pond.
“During a dry time you’d pump the pond down,” says Carlson, a 23-year GCSAA member who started at the course pre-construction. He notes that because of an extremely dry June, the pond today is as low as it’s been since installation.
By late June 2007, it hadn’t rained on Martha’s Vineyard in a month.
“We definitely have dry areas on the fairways,” Carlson adds. “We’re not green wall to wall.”
And yet, playability, as well as the satisfaction of the club’s members, hasn’t suffered. “[The dryness] doesn’t disturb the playability of the golf course at all,” he says. “It was designed this way…to play bump and run. And when it’s dry like this, the ball really rolls. It never stays on the [driest] knobs. It will find its way to the grassy areas.”
The site is almost devoid of trees, with an open layout that Carlson describes as an “inland links,” with 50 acres of scrub vegetation and 40 acres of fescue.
“The members are great,” he continues. “They understand the concept of how the course was designed, and about our water restrictions.”
Even so, reminding members that this is the way the course is meant to be is a constant chore for Carlson. “Our members are also members elsewhere at courses that are wall-to-wall green,” he says. “Human nature being what it is, this is a bit of a shock here at their summer course.”
His members are educated, Carlson says, but it’s still important to continue communicating. In fact, Carlson communicated this very topic to members through his summer newsletter. “To remind everybody about the type of design the course is, and how it lends itself well to the dry season,” he says. “Playability will not be compromised.”
“Even if it’s in the back of their mind, they’re aware that there are unique conditions here that they wouldn’t find at other clubs,” he notes. “Many of the members are up to speed on our regulations and restrictions for water use. It’s been a big help in getting people to understand — to lean on the regulations, rather than just on a philosophy of ‘this is how we’re going to manage the course.’”
Simply ‘how it is’
Abenakee Golf Club sits right on the coast of Maine on a peninsula just north of Kennebunkport. A private nine-hole course on a modest 60 acres, the club boasts 5,000 rounds or so every year from May 1 through Thanksgiving, the length of the golf season. Most notably, the 110-year-old course has never irrigated its fairways, and doesn’t plan to anytime soon. The extent of irrigation is three acres of greens and tees.
“Through June, July and August, the grasses will go dormant. It’s no great mystery. That’s just how they are,” says Greg Searle, a 30-year superintendent who is facilities manager at Abenakee. “It’s kind of unusual, but there’s no desire to irrigate fairways. It’s how it is — the members accept it.”
And just what does the course look like through those summer months? One word, according to Searle: “Brown.” But by late August, cooler nights, shorter days and hopefully more rain cause the course to slowly green up again.
“They know that’s what they’re going to get, and they deal with what they’re given,” he says of the club’s several hundred members. “Among golfers there’s a direct correlation between green and great. If it’s green, people are happier, even if playing conditions are the same. They just think it’s better.”
By and large, Searle’s members are neutral toward a brown, dormant course. “They’re not positive about it, but they’re not negative either,” he says. “I’ve heard it for 26 years. If we get more rain than normal and the fairways don’t go dormant, people say, ‘The course is in beautiful shape!’ If they do go dormant, people keep on playing every day and have fun, knowing that the course will come back in the fall.”
Searle says that long-time members of courses like Abenakee get used to hitting the ball off of hardpan.
“Hitting off of dormant turf is a whole different game,” he says. “Older players don’t have a problem, because they’ve done it their whole life. The new, modern golfer may have a tough time.
“If the course has a wonderful design, it can more than make up for dormant fairways,” he adds.
Playability aside, for Searle the payoff of unirrigated fairways is clear. In the summer, he mows fairways just once a week because of the slow rate of growth. Fairway disease, including dollar spot, is virtually nonexistent, and Searle has no need for fungicides. The labor saved on fairway mowing and maintenance is reallocated to other course grooming.
But his case may be unique among American golf courses. The real question is whether the United States can achieve a change in golfer mentality where brown becomes beautiful.
“It’s unacceptable on most courses,” Searle says. “People pay big bucks for memberships, and they expect everything to be perfect. There was a lot less perfection expected 25 years ago. With perfection comes green. Unfortunately, that’s how the nature of golf has evolved. I don’t see a lot of courses backing off on irrigating their fairways when they’ve spent millions to put in a new irrigation system and a superintendent comes in and wants to water less. That’s a real hard sell.”
What will it take to cause an acceptance shift on the color spectrum? To Searle, golf needs an ambassador on the level of Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus.
“We need these guys to say, ‘Let’s back off on water. It’ll create more consistent conditions, cost clubs less material and labor, and it’s good for the environment.’ We [superintendents] get up and say this stuff and it doesn’t sink in. But if Woods or Nicklaus says it, these are who people look up to.”
Searle is quick to point out that one of Woods’ greatest wins — the 1995 U.S. Amateur Championship — was played at Newport Country Club — a course with unirrigated fairways.
Can brown be beautiful in the future? As we’ve seen in these examples, there’s a hint the answer can be yes, but with a caveat. It will take regular education of golfers and constant communication to remind them of what you have already taught them. Whether brought on by climate change, a shift away from the Augusta Effect or some other driving factor, a browner golf course may be a reality for some superintendents in the not-too-distant future.
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