Making the cut

While many golfers and superintendents prefer striping’s visual appeal, the economic realities of today’s golf industry lead superintendents toward the “classic cut,” called by others the “half-moon” or “saddle cut” mowing pattern.

There are other techniques, including “contour” mowing which produces a curved striping effect as mowers follow a fairway’s twists, turns and slopes and the “push-pull” strategy which involves “pushing” mowers from tee to green and then “pulling” them from green to tee to produce a uniform look with no striping. Some superintendents even interchange their mowing techniques at different times of the year, due to agronomic, labor, weather or course traffic conditions. For most courses, however, it’s a matter of preference between the classic cut and striping methods. More frequently the economic advantages of the classic cut or half-moon technique are tilting the decision in that direction.

Paul Carter, CGCS, superintendent at The Bear Trace at Harrison Bay course in Harrison, Tenn., was fairly certain switching from striping to classic cut a year-and-a-half ago would relieve the strain on his maintenance budget, and after the first season of the change, he had the numbers to prove it.

“We started the classic cut last year after striping before, and we saved 312 man hours for the year,” Carter says. “We also saved 811 gallons of diesel from the year before and had a huge reduction in our carbon emissions. There was also a big savings in time. We start mowing two hours before the first tee time and we never got caught [by golfers]. We’d finish by 9:30 or so with two mowers, where with stripes it would take until 12:00 or 12:30, and we’d get caught by play on the 12th or 13th hole, so guys would have to sit on the mowers while people played through. Now, I can have them start on other jobs because they’re through so early.”

In Atlanta, Carter’s friend Ralph Kepple, CGCS, at East Lake Country Club, is not surprised at Carter’s numbers, although his own reasons for preferring the classic cut are more about aesthetics and tradition than economics. “We’re an old classic Donald Ross golf course, so I feel it fits because of how they used to mow in the old days with those old gang mowers,” Kepple says. “When we were mowing stripes, we were beating the rough up for the Tour Championship with all that turning around. And, personally, I don’t think striping looks all that good to my eye. Another advantage [of the classic cut] is the center line you get helps the average golfer’s alignment. Not so much the pros, but regular golfers like our members.”

Another Georgia club which hosts an annual tournament of some note is Augusta National Golf Club, where Justin Sims, the superintendent of the Alotian Club in Roland, Ark., spent five years on the maintenance staff. While he is aware the majority of clubs don’t have Augusta’s maintenance budget and can’t afford a fleet of mowers and operators to do the one-color perfection Augusta presents every April, he brought the Augusta disdain for striping with him to his job.

“When I took this position in May 2012, stripes were 100 percent burnt in,” Sims says. “I changed that right away. We switched to the half-moon look, up one side and down the other. We mow an infinite number of patterns. We never mow the same direction back-to-back. I’m 100 percent against burning in lines for striping. It’s hard on warm-season turfgrasses like Bermuda or zoysia. Grass grown laterally if it’s burnt in over and over, grows laterally rather than vertically, and makes for a poor lie, too.”

Over long periods, that lateral growth creates what one superintendent calls “leggy” turf, with blades extending laterally across the surface. That was what Sims found when he arrived at the Alotian Club. “When I got here, they were mowing at a little less than an inch,” he says. “Oh my God, you could make the grass stand up to around 2 inches because it was growing laterally. The first time we mowed with the classic cut, we almost needed a hay baler to pick up the grass.”

Sims admits some people like the look of striping, and he occasionally has his staff mow stripes into certain parts of the course for either a change or to relieve traditional mowing patterns, but he tries to avoid striping on back-to-back days. If required, Sims has his operators mow in the opposite direction to avoid burning in the stripes. “We have 100 acres of fairway,” he says. “It would take us two to three days to stripe it all.”

For Justin VanLanduit, superintendent of Briarwood Country Club in Deerfield, Ill., the decision to classic cut has been an economic necessity. Seasonal labor shortages and tight equipment budgets tilted the balance toward the classic-cut approach.

“We used to stripe everything, but in the spring and fall when we didn’t have a full staff, we could do it with two mowers, but when you’re down three to four guys because it’s hard to find labor and qualified labor during the busy season, it’s hard,” he says. “We’re only 18 holes, but if we wanted to stripe the whole course in the right amount of time, we’d have to send out four mowers. Those are $50,000-$60,000 these days, so if we go to the classic cut, we can eliminate at least one mower from the budget. And, if you have four machines, you need four operators. I would say that from what I’m seeing on Twitter or hearing at the GCSAA show, at least 30-40 percent of superintendents have recently gone to the classic cut.”

Courses don’t have to host televised events to advocate the striping approach. Memberships and boards, and some superintendents, simply prefer the look and will accommodate the additional budget expense. Others may be unaware their preferred stripes may be costing them money and creating some conditioning issues.

Superintendent Garrett Turner burns stripes into fairways at The Reserve at Moonlight Basin in Big Sky, Mont., for the majority of the club’s short golfing season, although he takes steps toward the end of the season to mow in the opposite direction and restore vertical turf growth.

“I never cared for the half-moon look,” he says. “We used to mow 12 to 6, 8 to 2 and 10 to 4, but now we mow in two different directions, depending on the shape of the fairway, like whether it’s a dogleg or not. We mow tee to landing area and then landing area to green, and switch the next time. If we had the resources, I’d mow all the fairways in the same direction all the time, but we don’t.”

Matt Kregel, superintendent at The Club at Strawberry Creek in Kenosha, Wis., has a different reason for adopting the striping pattern at the links-style course built in 2004-05. It’s a rationale based on the same more efficient productivity that leads other supers to go with the classic cut. “The fairway lines go everywhere, kind of darting in and out,” he says. “A few years back, we tried the traditional or classic cut, but we found it wasn’t quicker, and it actually took more time to mow the 45 acres of fairway on our 18-hole course, so we went back to striping. We consistently burn in lines, whether we start from the left or right side of the tee or go side-to-side. If we want to get rid of some of the grain, we’ll go side-to-side, and the way our course is laid out, that doesn’t really slow us down.”

The grain Kregel mentions is brought up in mowing pattern discussions on both fairways and greens. Augusta National mows everything in one direction, alternating during their season with green-to-tee and tee-to-green patterns, Sims says, then for The Masters mows everything from green to tee to create the one-look perfection for TV. Some theorize they create grain to go against the players and mitigate the length advantage of some of the Tour’s bombers. Several superintendents, however, scoffed at the supposed added roll created by tee-to-green mowing, saying any advantage can be measured in inches or a foot or two, rather than yards.

While the amount of turns required to create the striping pattern, whether vertical-horizontal or diagonal, especially those in the rough, are cited as major factors in time, wear-and-tear and, inevitably, expense, the classic cut approach can run into some of the same problems if repeated regularly. East Lake’s Kepple, who is otherwise a big fan of the classic cut, admits a frequent diet of that pattern creates turf compaction at the edges of the rough and the greens surround edges where the mowers turn, and will be doing some deep tine aeration to correct that this season.