When the ground starts to thaw out from the long winters sleep, thoughts turn to playing conditions and the golf course in general. Days like yesterday suddenly arrive and people start to question how we make decisions on opening, general play, and cart rules.
This time of year poses one of the largest challenges to all superintendents in the area. How deep is the freeze, how much shade, are you on temporary greens and tees, do you restrict carts, what's the weather following a thaw, will the sun be out, etc....
There are no hard and fast rules in these conditions, we can only assess turf conditions on the ground at our facility. We must weigh the membership needs and wants against the health of the turf, always remembering our most important responsibility is the stewardship of the clubs largest asset.
What starts as frozen and maybe safe conditions can easily turn wet and soft early in the afternoon. One of the issues we commonly see is frozen ground with a soft wet layer on top. The dormant roots of a plant are being held in frozen ground, while the top is pliable. A sudden turn of a cart wheel, spinning in spikes, or a ball mark, causes the turf to be sheared from the tightly held frozen roots. Since nothing is growing for the next 6-8 weeks this damage will be seen as slowly recovering turf and when we expect the grass to turn green and grow, areas of stunned or damaged turf is left behind.
Cart and foot traffic are some of the biggest reasons for slow green up and we will always error on the side of caution when conditions are vacillating between wet, frozen and dry. A 68 degree day followed by a week of 30's can be more dangerous than a summers hot and humid day if we don't take precautions.
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| Tire damage even when carts were restricted to paths |
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| Foot traffic wear on dormant grass on a tee. Notice green grass in front of the markers. |
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| When we try to start earlier than good sense dictates |
At this time of year, we don't have much control on what happens on the course due to weather. The pictures below show the damaging effects from what has seemed like a mild but cold winter. Snow that leaves areas exposed when cold winds blow, can have dangerous effects like desiccation and disease. Short grown grasses like poa annua on greens are especially vulnerable to these effects. You can see how random the effect can be. This is why many choose to close greens and cover them to reduce the chance of damage from winter.
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| The 12th green, desiccation combined with foot traffic |
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| The 10th green, notice the green where the snow stayed and then melted keeping the grass moist |
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| The 10th again, notice the 11th tee is bright green. Different grass at a different height only 10 yards away |
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| Interesting pattern in the rough, lasting effects from windblown snow. |
The extent of the issues on the greens cannot be determined at this time. The ground is still too frozen to take samples and put them in our shop to see how or if they recover. We try to apply a late season topdressing to protect the crown of the plant as well as a deep tine aeration to help remove as much water from the surface to reduce freeze and ice damage. All we can hope for is a general warming trend with sufficient moisture to coax the dormant turf back into shape and hope we can mow off the damage.
