AGCSATECH UPDATE AGCSATECH UPDATE
Right and below: The poor condition of roughs can detract from the enjoyment golfers derive from their round
The
one percenters Roughs, carries and areas of high wear often come in for heavy criticism by members and players. As AGCSATech senior agronomist Andrew Peart writes, focussing on these ‘one percenters’ can make a world to difference to the perception and enjoyment of your course.
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here is no doubt that on golf courses the condition of the main playing surfaces – greens, tees and fairways – is critical to the overall enjoyment of the game. However, to many who play, it is often much more than just hitting golf balls off manicured surfaces. While the vast majority of resources should, rightly, be directed towards ensuring consistent and high quality primary playing surfaces, other areas on the golf course must also present a suitable playing surface. The condition of roughs and carries is often heavily scrutinised at most courses. In some respects the roughs may well be akin to the local vegetation and provide the golfer with a sense of place, whether that be grasslands, native vegetation or sandy wastes. Unfortunately on newly constructed golf courses the establishment of rough areas or the transition of disturbed ground back to native vegetation is generally poor due to a combination of insufficient money, poor soil types, lack of irrigation or simply because these areas are not deemed important enough. On the odd occasion though the opposite occurs, where much time and effort is invested into establishing rough, usually to provide a distinct contrast with the fairway surface, only for it to fail due to the ongoing expense of water or other resources. The rough on most golf courses should provide a complete grass coverage unless there are particularly environments or design philosophies which dictate sandy or wispy areas. New golf courses are often opened for play once the main playing surfaces have met certain handover requirements, primarily for grass coverage and levelness, however, the roughs are often ignored with the pretence that they will ‘improve over time’. Once a course opens for play the amount of time
AUSTRALIAN TURFGRASS MANAGEMENT 18.5
and input into promoting grass coverage within the roughs is often neglected due to the requirements to maintain the primary playing surfaces. Simply there is often not the manpower or resources available. However, the success of these courses, particularly if they are pay-for-play courses, is often dependent on the golfer’s perception of the entire golf course. Thin lies in rough areas, that should be fully grassed, will not leave a good impression, particularly if the golfer is more often hitting from the rough than the fairway. Establishing rough can be challenging, especially if it needs to survive over the summer with little or no permanent irrigation often on hard, compacted clay soils. Where the rough is a blend of cool-season grasses, establishing those areas from seed can be particularly difficult due to poor soil types and lack of available irrigation. In warmseason grass climes where the rough needs to be established post-construction, the existing fairway vegetation should be utilised as the base grass composition. Utilising cores or scarifying is an ideal way of promoting greater grass growth within the roughs. It is obviously important that these living plants have very good soil contact, so some sort of soil cultivation is required in the rough beforehand to expose and prepare a seedbed for the vegetative material to take root. Once distributed over the surface, the material should be rolled into the soil to provide good soil contact but also to smooth the area and then marked as GUR. Irrigation of these areas can be problematic though especially if a course only has single row irrigation or hard-edged irrigation which does not throw into the roughs. Irrigation is vital if successful grass establishment within the roughs is to occur. The ideal scenario would be to have a