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A summer by the ‘seashore’
A south Florida superintendent follows
his own strategic plan to renovation success.
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Sanibel Island, Fla., is a palm-filled vacation and seasonal home paradise to thousands each year and home to The Sanctuary Golf Club. I have been its superintendent for the past 11 years, and during my time here, the club has turned over from a developer operation to equity membership and has maintained its status as one of southwest Florida’s finest clubs.
In 1994, the Arthur Hills-designed Sanctuary GC was ranked among the top 10 new private courses in the country. By 2003, it had become a battle to maintain the standards desired by our membership. We took the following steps to make a good course great again and to make a pleased membership proud.
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Above: Hole No. 4 after being established with ryegrass in March 2005. The trees in the background show damage from Hurricane Charley. |
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Getting started
The Sanctuary had several problems, the worst of which were:
• 419 bermudagrass contaminated with common bermudagrass throughout greens, tees, fairways and roughs
• Mutations throughout the 13-year-old Tifdwarf Bermuda greens, making management a struggle
• High sodium levels in the soil, especially greens
• Greens mix uniformity issues — varying mix depths from 8 inches to 22 inches
• Desire to not overseed with ryegrass during our winter months
• Hills-recommended course design changes in response
to several years of member/architect meetings and course reviews
This was not an easy list to overcome, but it convinced
our green and ground committee to pursue a golf course renovation.
We consulted with our regional USGA representatives, John Foy and Todd Lowe, and hired Ronny Duncan, Ph.D., of Turf Ecosystems LLC. They all agreed that the most important issue we needed to address was our grass situation. Seashore paspalum, a relatively new turfgrass variety in our area, had entered the golf market nearly five years before our process. Both groups were experienced with existing paspalum properties and brought with them techniques to help us establish and maintain this turfgrass.
Once our discussions began, we quickly installed test areas. The 12th tee was a good candidate for a par-3 tee and in the summer of 2003 was grassed with paspalum to much success. A small green was also installed in an out-of-play area. Both areas displayed informational signs about seashore paspalum, and the members and I learned about the grass together.
Over the past five years The Sanctuary had scheduled annual visits from Arthur Hills. He and I toured the course with committee members, making recommendations along the way. This history of recommendations was another good reason to move forward with the course renovation.
The strategic plan
In March 2004 we decided to move forward with the
“strategic plan,” which was an estimated $2.5 million golf course renovation project as well as a $4.5 million clubhouse renovation.
Some aspects of the project began within two months. The first step was to regrass and redesign our three putting greens and reconstruct and regrass the driving range with Sea Isle 1 paspalum. This was important to the club, and if completed on time and successfully would encourage the continued support of the larger aspect of the project beginning course-wide in July 2004.
We approached the driving range with a plan that we anticipated would work on the course-wide project. This was a good strategy in determining what worked and what didn’t. It proved invaluable as our process continued.
Before the contractors visited to review the entire project, we invited Hills back. This final review of the course became an important aspect of the strategic plan and was communicated to the bidding contractors and the membership. His final visit resulted in a tweaking of the golf course in several areas to update design features and address several interests of the membership to improve course playability.
We then chose a contractor. As superintendent and manager for the project, it was important for me to have a hand in the entire process. The scope of work presented to prospective contractors included a project timeline, in-house operations (responsibilities of the Sanctuary staff), the architect’s approved changes, greens reconstruction methods, bermudagrass removal methods, sprigging rates and sod quantities to base the bid on, and other outside contractor activities.
We selected Country Club Services, based on Florida’s east coast.
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Above: The 15th hole, following the spraying of fairways and rough and prior to seeding with ryegrass. The bunker faces, collars and greens were not sprayed at this time. |
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Removing bermuda
Bermudagrass, the world’s greatest weed, was not going to go easily, so upon recommendations from the USGA and industry peers, we took the most aggressive approach possible and decided to spray out the bermudagrass at least twice and overseed into the “dead” bermudagrass for the 2005 golf season.
We used a generic glyphosate product at a rate of 6 ounces/gallon combined with Fusilade II at a rate of 16 ounces/acre beginning in August 2004. We used a boom application providing a volume of 60 gallons/acre. Within two weeks of beginning our first spray application, we were visited by Hurricane Charley, our area’s first hard-hitting hurricane in 40 years.
This interruption in some ways was made easier because of the decreased mowing, but with a monstrous task ahead of us of cleaning up and overseeding early for the season. Forty days and several thousand dollars later, we opened the dead, brown and battered golf course.
The only areas left unsprayed were greens surfaces, collars, steep slopes and bunker faces. Determining a ryegrass seeding rate over the top of dead bermudagrass was interesting. We needed to keep surface disruption to a minimum because although the course was brown and not growing, it was open for play. We set aside one week for the ryegrass application, which wasn’t enough — it should have been at least two.
This application would require us to seed in late September so by Nov. 1, 2004, we would be established with ryegrass and ready for the 2005 season. This was wishful thinking as temperatures were high, rain was sparse and initial rates of 600 pounds per acre grew to 1,000 pounds per acre in a struggle to get green grass again.
Following the extensive program of spraying out the bermudagrass, overseeding with ryegrass and spraying the course again, we decided we’d still need a soil fumigant, methyl bromide, to achieve our desired results. We applied methyl bromide to 70 acres at a rate of 450 pounds per acre using the solid-tarp application method and close communication and scheduling between Country Club Services and our fumigation company, Hendrix & Dail.
I originally thought of this establishment as overseeding, but it actually was establishment of a new type of grass. We used 78,000 pounds of seed to establish the course for the season. This was the most aggressive approach and helped ensure success.
It was at least January before course conditions rose to the level our membership had been used to. With the season in full swing and good weather we were able to successfully host our annual seasonal events while preparing for our upcoming course closing in May.
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Before construction began, the crew tested seashore paspalum on the par-three No. 12 tee. Players and personnel both liked what they saw. |
Keeping greens, crew
During this time we knew that replacing our greens mix would result in healthier greens, but we didn’t know how the greens would return to their original contouring.
My first answer was that we wouldn’t have the same greens, but we would have properly functioning USGA greens. Greens inspections over the years revealed we had varying greens-mix depths. We feared we would lose the character of our greens and be left with who knows what. We determined that LIDAR scanning would provide the detail needed to return the greens to their original shapes.
Scott Pool, owner and operator of Terrashapers, was called in to scan the greens surfaces. It was done in two days and he was able to gather and package the information for Arthur Hills and the club and computerize the results so Sanctuary staff members could re-reference specific points with hand-held equipment to precisely reestablish the greens’ original surface design.
By then it was April and time to spray out the course again. Why spray out all the ryegrass? Ryegrass was only half the picture. There were still bermudagrass areas left intentionally from before winter. Bermuda not already dead typically concentrated in wet areas and was showing itself and needed to be treated. Once again — but for the last time — our membership would play on a nice brown course.
May 1, 2005, arrived and the golf course was closed. Contractors had allocated equipment to the site, and preparatory work was accomplished. That morning was a mix of emotions, but one thing was for sure: I wasn’t going to be able to pull this off by myself.
From the beginning of the renovation, I emphasized the importance of keeping our staff throughout the entire project. There were questions about what they would do with no grass to mow and suggestions of a limited staff until the course was ready for daily maintenance and play. I answered those questions immediately and formally. My assistant and I created a list that showed not only what our staff would be doing, but also demonstrated that we could save money by using their skills to accomplish tasks that otherwise would have to be outsourced.
Much more than regrassing
Our project was referred to as a regrassing, but ultimately it was much more. Our approach included the following:
• Raising irrigation heads and installing erosion control (in-house procedures)
• Sod-stripping the tee tops, tee slopes, greens and collars and burying the material
• Excavating the greens mix down to the choker layer and refilling to 12 inches
• Installing the old greens mix on the tee tops following
excavation
• Bulldozing out the heavy organic areas around fairway drain basins
• Making shaping changes where planned and capping the tee tops with the old greens mix
• Using a Rotodairon on the entire golf hole where terrain allowed
• Fumigating the entire area to be grassed with paspalum
• Laser-leveling the tee tops and finish floating the golf hole
• Inspecting all irrigation operations and determining sod/sprig areas
• Installing grass
Removal of the existing turf cover was the first step in the process once the course was closed. We dug bury pits in several locations. We buried turf stripped off tees, greens and slope areas, then covered with a minimum 3 feet of fill. Trucking the material off the island wasn’t an option and would have been much more expensive.
We determined bury pit locations by using both irrigation and drainage as-builts. The construction contractors, our irrigation manager and I picked the locations and avoided damage to existing buried equipment. This proved successful and efficiently handled the stripped sod.
But we didn’t have to bury all the old turf surfaces. We encouraged the use of the Rotodairon tiller where possible. The plan was to use this equipment a minimum of three times throughout the subtly sloped areas of the course and once where the turf cover was removed with the sod cutter on tee, green and steep slopes. To use the tiller successfully, a few important factors had to be present:
• The dead turf area needed to be as dry as possible.
• The area needed to be free of the dense, dead bermuda-
grass, as it would cause clogging of the tiller.
• The areas to be tilled three times couldn’t be too steep, because the Rotodairon application will “flatten” the feature with multiple applications.
The successful operation of the Rotodairon was key to the success of our project. This incorporation of the decaying turf into the soil and the tilling of the compacted soil had great benefits during the grow-in.
Greens reconstruction consisted of removal of the existing turf and greens mix down to the choker gravel layer. We planned a reinstallation of 12 inches of greens mix, but as I mentioned, we wanted to make sure the greens would be reconstructed with the same putting surface design, or at least as close as we could get.
We scanned the surfaces of the existing greens so we could go into the shelled-out green area and reestablish the proper new surface. We used a hand-held tool to determine the previous green surface point. From there we either added the needed 12 inches to get back to the original point or added choker sand to raise the choker blanket. We did that so that after adding the proper 12 inches of greens mix the result would be the same putting surface elevation and terrain as before.
We were able to accomplish this in-house with staff. The results pleased both Arthur Hills and our membership. Management of the greens was much improved over years past and had the proper greens mix depths throughout the greens while maintaining the architect’s design.
Grass establishment
The grass choice for the fairways, tees and roughs was Sea Isle 1, with Sea Isle Supreme for the greens. We didn’t need pre-plant fertilizer prior to grassing because soil test results indicated that the phosphorous levels were sufficient and pH was in an acceptable range for paspalum.
With the rotary tilling, we hadn’t removed built-up organics but rather turned the material into the sandy soil below, creating a consistent and favorable soil. However, on the new greens mix we implemented a pre-plant program that encouraged quick and healthy establishment of the Sea Isle Supreme. We applied pre-plant products to the final graded greens surface prior to sprigging and worked it into the top inch of the soil with a bunker rake.
We looked at sprigging rates closely during the project planning. Greens received the standard rate of 30 bushels/1,000 square feet, but we used a sprig rate for tees, fairways and roughs of double the normal rate, 1,200 bushels/acre. This was met with a few questions at first but helped minimize our sod use to 15 acres and enabled us to grow the turf in quicker with fewer fertilizer inputs.
Irrigation is the key to any grow-in. We didn’t need to replace the irrigation system for the project, just improved and repaired aspects of it. All aspects of irrigation work — raising heads, replacing valves, installing and relocating irrigation heads, grow-in scheduling and irrigation head adjusting — was done in-house.
Once the grass was installed — either sod or sprigs — we took the same approach to water scheduling as if we were growing bermudagrass. Proper watering right away is essential. Like all other grow-ins, we scheduled daily watering with multiple cycles until turf cover allowed for night-only watering.
Once the grass was installed and watered-in sufficiently, we applied Ronstar pre-emergent at an active ingredient rate of 2 pounds/acre. This protected against unwanted weeds and created a clean and weed-free grow-in.
Our approach to fertility was 50 percent granular and 50 percent liquid fertilizer through fertigation and limited foliar spraying, primarily on greens. To this we added pHairway acid injection and wetting agents to improve water efficiency. The acid injection was able to treat the high pH, high bicarbonate water and improve permeability of the soils.
We applied a total of 6 pounds nitrogen/1,000 square feet to the sprigged areas over a three-month period to grow in the sprigged tee, fairway and rough areas, including all granular and fertigation applications. Sodded areas received much less fertilizer than sprigged surfaces.
As with bermudagrass, close mowing encourages seashore paspalum to spread. We mowed sod at a height of 1 inch once it was secure enough to handle the weight of mowers. We kept 1 inch on the sod areas throughout the entire grow-in and rose to 1.25 inches at the course opening in November.
Within three weeks we were ready to mow all sprigged areas. We mowed tees and fairways at a height of 0.400 inches at first mowing. This first mowing substantially reduced the amount of visible turf, but instantly encouraged it to spread. Following this, we maintained these areas at the same height until we defined the interface between the fairways and roughs. Scalping wasn’t needed; we just let the rough grow up to the desired height.
Two weeks after sprigging, we mowed the greens at a height of 0.187 for their first cut. Again, this boosted turf spread, and within five weeks we saw full turf coverage on the greens. We continually reduced heights as density increased and achieved our target height of cut of 0.110 inches at course opening in November.
Quickly following the first mowing, we rolled all sprigged areas. We decided to mow first to cut the maximum amount of grass and then begin rolling. We rolled fairways and tee tops with a double-drum 2-ton roller and rolled the greens with a small tennis court roller and vibratory triplex rollers. We didn’t rely on heavy rolling of the greens, but were generous with straight sand topdressing that was compatible with the new greens mix.
A new beginning
Since opening in November 2005, six months after closing in May, management of the course has been different.
Gone are the days of overseeding to keep good winter color. We experienced a 40 percent reduction in water use during the winter months, which has saved water, electricity and improved playing conditions. Turf density and playability is second to none, and the membership is extremely pleased with their new golf course.
Over a one-year period, The Sanctuary went through tremendous changes. It was a challenging and rewarding process. The conversion from bermudagrass to seashore paspalum is a trend that is just beginning now that southern golf course managers have a good turf option to bermudagrass. With proper planning, communication, good contractors and diligent turf management, it’s a transformation that could work for you.
Leo Feser Award candidate
This article is eligible for the 2008 Leo Feser Award, presented annually since 1977 to the author of the best superintendent-written article published in GCM during the previous year. Superintendents receive a $300 stipend for articles. Feser Award winners receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Golf Industry Show, where they are recognized. They also have their names engraved on a plaque permanently displayed at GCSAA headquarters.
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