The two scariest words

For restoration-oriented architects, it’s all the rage. But any superintendent who has been through the process will quietly admit it’s a slow, painstaking procedure with hidden costs, lots of frustration and more early failure than is commonly acknowledged.

“Greens expansion” is a common element of most renovation these days. That’s especially the case with older golf courses — those that date back to pre-World War II, and for which aerial and other pictorial evidence shows a considerable degree of shrinkage in putting surfaces. Seemingly the easiest, least disruptive way to regain old hole locations and find more diversity to putting surfaces is to chase the old perimeters and recapture them.

The process is certainly less disruptive than rebuilding greens. In terms of “bang for the buck,” it’s an appealing alternative with impact on only two or three acres of the golf course. It’s certainly more appealing to members, committees and the general golfing public than the turmoil entailed by vast areas of disturbance with bunker restoration, fairway expansion or rerouting.

Besides, goes the popular appeal, it can be done without shutting down the whole golf course. What could be better?

Whether done on its own or as part of a more ambitious course renovation project, greens expansion entails considerable preparation. After all, you are trying to cultivate a sustainable sward of fine-leafed turfgrass cut at under ¼th of an inch upon a surface that, for decades, has been the home to coarser grass that has been accustomed to cuts of anywhere from ¼th of an inch to 2 inches.

It’s not a matter of just mowing down existing turf or interseeding greens-quality grasses. The whole soil structure must be uprooted, remixed and matched as closely as possible to the subsurface of the existing green. That involves subtle regrading. Often it entails removing an accumulated sand dam by peeling back the existing putting surface and shaving down the slope so that it can meld seamlessly into the desired perimeter. Thank goodness for sod cutters, one of the handiest and most under-appreciated machines in a greenkeeper’s arsenal.

By the way, if you want to teach your golfers a lesson about the intense physical labor entailed in day-to-day maintenance, invite them to join you for a morning of lifting and laying those 60-pound, ½-inch-thick sod rolls. They’ll spend the evening dining on ibuprofen and the next morning achingly rethinking everything they ever thought they knew about a golf course.

The subtleties of micronutrient soil chemistry guarantee a certain gap in the composition between the new soil base and the old one. That’s not a death sentence, just another obstacle in the ability of the new turf zone to blend in and thrive like the old one. If the perimeter base has too little organic matter, it might dry out faster than the green core; if it’s too fertile, it might get wet feet and suffer anaerobically. In both cases, it has little tolerance for foot traffic.

The source of the grass that’s introduced also is a factor. If freshly harvested sod from a commercial grower, it must adapt to an entirely different growing culture. If sown from an on-site nursery, it will be better adapted but still not used to the pounding imposed upon a green perimeter — not just from golfers but from the impact of mowers turning. And if taken from existing low-mow areas like a tee or fairway, it still needs to adapt to the particular soil base, as well as tolerate mowing heights much lower than it is used to.

Greens perimeters, by definition, extend out into new areas, often finding their way into zones with marginally more shade. This entails a lower sun angle early and late in the day: quality light is delayed in the a.m. and lost in the p.m. Moreover, since most green expansion projects occur late in the golf season to minimize interference with play, the sun angle is already dropping quickly, the apex lower, and the quality of exposure greatly minimized from peak-season summer. Unless the green expansion is preceded by considerable tree removal, the result will be turfgrass that struggles.

It helps the recovery process if the perimeter areas are kept marginally longer in mowing heights and allowed to grow through a protracted phase of growth before being presented as fully playable. Clubs rarely take enough time, though. The process gets rushed. Ropes are dropped or tread upon. And when the inevitable early decline sets in, people start questioning the superintendent rather than appreciating the difficulty of such a transition. Compounding matters is that once early reversals arise, it can take a full season or two for the problem to be solved.

Superintendents know this. My own sense is that architects are a little more cavalier with the process — perhaps because they know the long-term results, but also because they do not have to live with the short-term, day-to-day grind of making things work.

The problem generally is that the people superintendents work for and report to don’t understand the complexity of what is involved and come to expect immediate success. Rather than push back ahead of time and convey a sense of defensiveness, superintendents try their best and hope to be able to produce a successful outcome. But the facts of slow establishment, the toll taken by inevitable wear and tear, and the expectations of golfers all conspire to make it awkward when the first season produces results that are thin, patchy, not strong enough to withhold traffic and incapable of enduring extremes of wet or searingly hot weather.

As difficult as green expansion is, the long-term outcome is worthwhile. It adds flexibility to the course, conveys a sense of historic respect for the design and opens golfers’ eyes to what is possible through creative planning.