Indian Hills CC Turf Management: Why did we fare so well this spring? Science, Maintenance practices or luck?

Long story.... so if you have some time, here is the condensed version:

I've been asked numerous times about why our course came through the winter quite well while many courses on our Island had severe damage. Was it Science? Was it our preventative planning? Was it luck? Well, it's always good to be lucky, but in this case it was all because of what we did and have been doing for years that helped us get through the devastating winter weather relatively unscathed.

About 15 years ago, I suggested to that we aggressively try to reduce our Poa Annua (annual bluegrass) populations. At the time, our overall levels exceeded 85%. Meaning our golf course was primarily Poa Annua. This grass, while a few times during the season is quite a nice surface, is a maintenance draining nightmare. In the spring it seeds at incredible rates and unfortunately provides very inconsistent surfaces on greens. In the summer it requires constant babysitting and frequent watering due to its shallow rooting, and often does not survive the summer heat.

I took a chance with a product that slowly "reduces" the amount of Poa annua by breaking down the waxy coating near the crown of the plant going into winter. This process then in conjunction with winter weather leads to dessication and approximately 30% of the population reduced. We introduced Ryegrass into the fairways at the same time and our conversion was underway.

Our first year of the conversion was frightening, the results were dramatic and the fairways looked "dead" in the spring. Once the soil temperature warmed and the realization of 30% dead came to be, The Rye started to germinate and 70% of the Poa rebounded and greened up. We were on our way to better fairway turf conditions.

We continued to work with this product on the fairways for the next few seasons with great success. I decided to run a 2 year trial on our chipping green, which was probably 90% Poa at the time. We learned enough about "the system" to then incorporate the practice putting green and then finally moved onto the entire course. Over the next 10 years we have reduced most Poa populations on the greens to a very manageable percentage of approximately 20%, some have much less, but only a few have more. A few greens on our course are very "Poa promoting" due to envirionments. #8 for example, due to the trees that surround it, does not see the sun until after 11:00am and the shaded back portion is nearly consumed by Poa, and as you can see this year it is one of the greens that has a few damaged areas remaining.

We continue to do all we can to promote bentgrass populations on our greens. #13 for example is 90% bentgrass, but the 10% of Poa that flat out died from ice damage this winter made that green appear to be bad, we have twice aerated and over-seeded it this spring and it will be 95% bentgrass, 5% of that damn Poa will somehow work its way back in there.

So, that was an extremely condensed version of our conversion work that has been going on for a long time and will continue as long as we continue to improve our surfaces by doing so.

Now, what does that have to do with why we had less damage than many other courses on LI?

The majority of damage from this past winter was ice related. Poa Annua has a basic time frame of about 45 days, where it can survive being under ice, after that....it probably will not survive. Much of LI had Ice cover long past 45 days this past winter and those courses that have vast populations of Poa Annua had severe damage. Therefore, our long term battle against Poa and increased populations of other species of grasses helped us survive the winter.

Another, important factor to our green's turf survival was our very aggressive late season Aeration and topdressing program, which we have also been on for many years. We Deeptine Aerate our greens 11" deep X 3/4" hole X 3" spacing.

Next we follow with extremely heavy topdressing with 2mm particle size sand. This sand is much larger in size than our "in season" topdressing. We work it into the holes that the deep tine provided and the larger pore space provided by the larger particle size allows water to wick down through the soil. The heavy amount of sand that is still left on the greens for the winter provided crown protection which can help reduce damage done by harsh winter conditions.