In complete control

When Jeff Girard first arrived at StoneRidge Golf Club at the start of the 2007 season he found, in his words, “A dollar-spot factory.”

StoneRidge is a semi-private facility, located in Stillwater, Minn., across the St. Croix River from Wisconsin and minutes from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The club opened for play on July 4, 2000 and has come to be regarded by many as one the premier public-access golf facilities in the state. Under normal circumstances the golf season runs from approximately the second week of April to the second week of November.

The golf course itself was built on sand-based soil and the playing area consists largely of bentgrass. The in-season climate is characterized by warm, humid days and cool nights, ideal conditions for dollar spot to thrive.

This situation is not unique; in most of North America, save for the Pacific Northwest, dollar spot is a superintendent’s most pressing disease issue. Eradicating it is not, and Girard found that the fungicides available to him when he first arrived at StoneRidge weren’t necessarily effective over the long term.

“For the most part, there has never been a real great dollar-spot product,” he says. “There are a lot of pretty good dollar spot products out there but you have to kind of spray them preventatively. You need to get it out before you see disease activity.

“The problem with that is … if you want to keep the disease in check, you need to spray preventatively. You’re looking at spraying every two weeks, three weeks at the most. The problem you then run into is from a money standpoint.”

Girard controlled the issue on his greens, which cover approximately four acres, but his 33 acres of fairways were another challenge. He found it impossible to spray often enough to control dollar spot without going over budget.

“If on a scale of 1-10 my dollar spot was a four,” Girard says, “I could go out and spray and maybe it would get back to a two. And then the next time around it’s up to a six and I would knock it back to a four. So you’re never really getting back to a zero.”

Each year Girard would set a budget that called for five fungicide applications on his fairways. But by season’s end, he found himself having to put down two additional fungicide applications to combat his dollar-spot problem. “I was spending more money,” Girard recalls, “but I still wasn’t getting the control out of the chemicals; I still wasn’t getting the results.”

A solution to the dilemma was needed. That solution turned out to be Xzemplar, a Group 7 fungicide developed by BASF for use on golf courses and other large-scale turfgrass sites, including athletic fields and turf farms. Its active ingredient is luxapyroxad (26.55 percent).

Girard first learned about Xzemplar by his local distributor, Chris Hoff of WinField, which is based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

As the fall of 2014 drew closer, Girard still had serious concerns about dollar spot. On Sept. 15 of that year, at Hoff’s urging, he applied the Xzemplar for the first time. “It completely wiped out the dollar spot,” Girard says, “and I was completely clean through the rest of the fall.”

Based on those result, Girard changed his protocol for 2015.

“I was so fed up with what I was doing in the past,” he says. “The different chemicals on the market, I just wasn’t happy or getting the success I wanted. I told myself, ‘This year, we’re going to really change it up.’ In the past I used to spray some of the cheaper chemicals that are more preventative early in the year and then I would save my one or two applications of what at the time was considered real knock-it-out products. I was saving those for the middle of the summer when dollar spot got really bad. My thinking was I need to get at the dollar spot right away and I need to get it under control from Day 1.”

On May 25, Girard put down his first application of Xzemplar for 2015. “From a timing standpoint it was what I had done in the past,” he says. “I waited until I thought the conditions might be favorable; I still hadn’t seen any dollar spot on the 25th of May. But I told myself, ‘It’s starting to become favorable, so I’m going to get out ahead of it.’”

Girard hasn’t seen any dollar spot at StoneRidge since then but he continues to adhere to a regular spraying protocol. “I sprayed [Xzemplar] on the 25th of May and my next application was five weeks later,” he says. “I still hadn’t seen any [dollar spot]. In the previous eight years, by the Fourth of July, I was already sick of dollar spot.”

In addition to choosing Xzemplar as his fungicide, Girard has other steps to produce healthier turf. “We had a thatch problem,” he says. “We’ve increased our core aerification on our fairways the last two years to try and reduce the thatch level. It has helped. It’s allowed us to be able to irrigate less than we have in the past.”

Girard also scaled back on the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers in 2015 in an effort to reduce thatch buildup. Under normal circumstances, this would have made the turf more vulnerable to dollar spot, but as of this writing the fungus was not present. “We’ve only put down two-tenths-of-a-pound of nitrogen,” Girard said in late July. “That’s low for a golf course.”

By spending fewer dollars on nitrogen-based fertilizer, Girard has additional funds to devote to other areas. Call it a classic win-win situation for the superintendent and his customers.

And while no superintendent is ever completely satisfied with the condition of his/her golf course for more than a short stretch of time, Girard can look at the property and feel a sense of satisfaction about what he and his team have done to keep the facility free of dollar spot. “Dollar spot was quite rampant at other courses in the area,” he says. “I would talk to other superintendents and get pictures on Twitter from golf courses nearby complaining about dollar spot and I’m here now walking up and down fairways trying to find one section of dollar spot in them.”