ROGERS — This isn’t the time of year for a leisurely stroll on the golf course.
For the people who are responsible for caring for some of the area’s premier golf courses, winter is actually one of the busiest times of year. There are fewer golfers using the courses compared with the peak spring, summer and fall months, allowing greenskeepers to work on the things that could never bedone when golf season is in full swing.
“In terms of maintaining the golf course, this is the time of year we get most projects done that we can’t get to in the busy season,” said Chase Turpin, who has been an assistant superintendent at Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers for six years. “The biggest challenge is having good enough weather [during the winter] to get out and do the things we need to do, without harming the golfcourse more than we’re helping it.”
As the golf season winds down in the fall, greenskeepers determine the top projects they hope to accomplish over the course of the winter months. In the case of Pinnacle, the home of the LPGA’s Walmart Northwest Arkansas Championship presented by P&G, the goal for last offseason was to improve drainage on the par-71 course.
“We were having troubleon some fairways growing grass because it was too wet,” said Bart Bellmon, an assistant superintendent at Pinnacle for five years. “We added a lot of drainage, and that worked,” making it easier to grow grass on fairways.
Bellmon added that the grounds crew is hoping to add more drains to the course this winter. The big goal, though, is to add irrigation to the course.
This past summer was a hot, dry one, and despite the best efforts of greenskeepers, there were parts of the course that began drying out as the summer progressed. Next summer could see precipitation reach, or even exceed, normal levels, but the club’s staff is making preparations so that it will be ready if the summer of 2013 is a repeat of the arid 2012 summer.
That means digging up and replacing existing irrigation pipes, then connecting them with wires to the main computer that controls Pinnacle’s watering system.
“The current projects are being done “so that we can keep it greener,” Bellmon explained. “A lot of it is preparation for next season, as far as getting things set up for next March - so when the golfers are ready to go, we’re also ready to go.”
Over at the Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, the big project this winter isn’t hydration; it’s trees.
The par-72 Blessings, the home course of the Arkansas Razorbacks men’s and women’s golf teams, is built along Clear Creek, and surrounded by thousands of trees. Many were damaged or destroyed by the ice storm of January 2009, and while the trees that affect the course’s playability have mostly been removed, there are many more that need to go.
The dry conditions of this past summer didn’t help the situation.
“This winter is a big year for us to try to get to some of the damaged vegetation from the ice storm,” said Jason Miller, the Blessings’ course superintendent since March 2009. “It takes years to clean up. We’ve had a lot of trees die from the damage, and then we had the drought stacked on top of that.
“There are some trees that are in play, that could be very dangerous if they fell [because of] wind or a storm.”
Miller said there are around 200-250 trees that have been marked for removal. In addition, the grounds crew will work on more standard yearly maintenance issues, such as landscaping and minor drainage projects.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Not long after the season begins, some of the nation’s top college golfers come to the Blessings.
The course is home to an NCAA Men’s Golf Regional on May 16-18, which is the last event leading up to the NCAA Championships, two weeks later. The Blessings played host to the women’s SEC Championships in April.
Miller said the college events don’t really change what he and his staff do. The biggest challenges come from accommodating all the golfers and spectators, issues like food and parking.
“The goal is every day that if we can play golf, we need to set it up where it’s in championship-level condition,” Miller said. “If you do that, you don’t really need to step it up that much” for big tournaments.
The people who take care of Pinnacle echoed a similar statement, that if the goal is to keep the course in top shape, it makes it easier to handle tournaments. But Pinnacle’s biggest golf tournament is a professional event, and it’s on The Golf Channel, which means that cable-television subscribers around the world can watch the event. In previous years, parts of the event have been aired on CBS.
The 2013 Walmart Northwest Arkansas Championship is June 21-23, with practice rounds starting June 17.
“I think it does [add pressure],” Bellmon said. “People all over the country are going to see your greens, they’re going to see your golf course. You want it that much better.”
“You strive to provide good quality for the members that are here, but when you see the TV cameras, you know that anyone in the nation or world can look at what you’re doing,” Turpin added. “It’s added pressure.”
Pinnacle has hosted the LPGA event since its inception in 2008. In 2012, the total prize purse of $2 million made it tied for the fifth most-lucrative event on the women’s tour.
The LPGA is in frequent communication with Pinnacle officials about course changes it would like to see for the 2013 event, but their ideas are less mandates, Turpin said, and more suggestions.
“They might want us to mow at certain heights or [alter] certain areas of the golf course, and we’ll take those into consideration,” Turpin said. “If we feel it’s going to do more harm than good, we’ll try to come to a compromise. It’s a give and take.”LATE START
For most of this December, it’s been tough to get big projects going.
The end of the fall was warm, with plenty of days when it was sunny and temperatures reached into the 60s. Golfers took advantage.
Turpin estimated that there have been, on average, 20 rounds of golf played per day at Pinnacle in December. Miller didn’t have an estimate of the number of golfers who have been out on the Blessings’ course, but said it’s been higher than usual.
“We really haven’t seen golf fall off like we normally do this time of year, so our day-to-day goal is keeping the golf course playable for members,” Miller said. “It was the same last winter, which was unusually warm. You had a lot of golf being played when normally you would not.”
Temperatures cooled off significantly last week, dropping below freezing on several nights. This often resulted in frost, a real danger to the course.
When below-freezing temperatures are in the forecast, it’s important that there’s enough moisture in the ground, as water provides insulation on grass - particularly when it’s dry and windy. It’s even more important to stay off the course when it’s so cold, until the sun comes out and melts the frost. (When snow is in the forecast, a fungus is applied to prevent snow mold.)
“Frost is detrimental to turfgrass,” Turpin said. “If you walk on it or drive on it, any time it’s below 32 degrees, if there’s frost on the turfgrass, you’re actually doing more harm than good.”
As the temperatures cool during fall and winter months, much of the grass on golf courses goes dormant - but not all of it. While thefairways and tees and much of the rough is dormant, the grass on the green is still growing, albeit slowly.
Maintaining it for the hardy souls who brave cooler temperatures to get in 18 holes is necessary, and must be budgeted into the limited window that is a Northwest Arkansas winter - along with finding time for all the other needed work before spring rolls around.
The difficulty of maintaining parts of a golf course “usually goes with mowing heights,” Turpin said, which is why “greens are the toughest to maintain, followed by fairways and tees, and then rough. The lower you’re mowing, the harder it is to maintain.
“Once you’re in the depths of winter, you could get away with mowing two or three times a week, but sometimes you go [a] whole week without mowing.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/26/2012