Breakthrough bent

The hue is distinctive. T-1 bentgrass presents a rich, ivy-toned appearance. Even the man who developed the variety wondered if T-1 would be embraced by agronomic traditionalists.

“I thought it would be too dark for people,” says Dr. Doug Brede, research director for Jacklin Seed. “But everybody loves it because you can grow it with less nitrogen and have that nice T-1 color. It never really turns pale on you.”

Ten years after debuting in another country, T-1 bentgrass enjoyed a breakthrough when Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., site of the 2014 PGA Championship, became the first venue using the variety on its putting greens to host a major championship. The greens withstood a zany week that included humid practice rounds, a comfortable start to competition and soggy conclusion.

T-1 has experienced an arduous journey since 1994, when Brede sought to create a “heat-tolerant, low-maintenance” bentgrass. The variety reached the market in 2004, a perilous period for any golf-related unveilings in the U.S.

So a turfgrass developed to work at places such as Valhalla, a transition zone course with a membership that enjoys fast, smooth greens, debuted at the Izumi Parktown Golf Course in Sendai, Japan, where superintendent Katsuhito Takefushi assumed others were already using the variety.

Brede, who keeps pictures of the Japanese course in his Idaho office, remembers a quizzical exchange with Takefushi.

“What? I was the guinea pig.” Takefushi asked Brede.

Yes, Takefushi’s course went first.

Other golf facilities in Asia followed Izumi Parktown. Brede says 300 of the approximately 400 golf courses built in China in the past decade use T-1 bentgrass. Multiple European and Korean courses also use the variety. Jon Scott, President of Nicklaus Design Agronomy Services, says his company has used T-1 in Moscow. “I’ll just say it’s worked well in every climate that we have put it in,” Scott says. That includes Beijing, which endures stifling summers and frigid, dry winters.

Brede understands why T-1 didn’t generate an immediate buzz in the U.S. “It takes a while for bentrgasses to catch on,” he says. “You almost have to have a new generation of superintendents who understand how to grow it. And in eight of the 10 years it has been out, we have had a depression in the U.S. that has really cut down on the number of courses being constructed.”
 

Trending through the transition zone

Economic woes haven’t affected Valhalla, a regular major-championship site, and Roger Meier is part of the new generation of superintendents. The 36-year-old Meier faced a tricky decision regarding putting green surfaces when Valhalla underwent renovations in 2011.

A tight schedule required the project to be completed in the spring of 2012. Plus, the transition zone, an area that stretches through the Ohio-Kentucky border, presents conundrums for superintendents looking to grow healthy, resilient turf. The winters are often too cold for warm-weather turfgrasses, but muggy summers can damage a cool-season grass such as bent.

“It’s a tough place for any bent to grow because of the humidity and the warm nights,” Brede says. “The warm night temperatures really do the bentgrasses in, but T-1 really tolerates the heat, so if they have 90-, 100-degree days, it’s doing fabulous. Any bentgrass is going to suffer if they have 85-degree nights.”

Meier consulted with multiple industry experts, including Scott, the former head of the PGA Tour’s agronomy department. Jack Nicklaus designed Valhalla, which opened in 1986. The PGA purchased the club in 2000. Scott was introduced to T-1 during a seed panel conducted by Simplot in 2007, and Nicklaus Golf recommends the variety to clients interested in installing bentgrass. “Since I had already used it successfully in various climates, I was very comfortable in making that recommendation to Roger,” Scott says. “Roger, of course, did his own due diligence and came to the same conclusion that I did. There weren’t any complaints about T-1.”

Multiple courses located in the same microclimate installed T-1 greens before Valhalla, including Hunting Creek Country Club in Louisville. Hunting Creek switched from Penncross to T-1 when its greens were rebuilt in 2010.

Hunting Creek superintendent Ted Willard researched various varieties of creeping bentgrass, including A-1 and A-4, which he wanted to stay away from because of the volume of thatch the varieties produced during tests in one of Hunting Creek’s nurseries. Willard visited the University of Kentucky’s turfplots and admired the appearance of the T-1. He then visited Otis Park Golf Course in Bedford, Ind., where superintendent Brice Gordon had installed the variety on the nine-hole course’s greens. Bedford is 70 miles from Louisville. “His greens were incredible,” Willard says.

Valhalla opened with Penncross greens before being regrassed with an A-1 and A-4 blend. The early performance of T-1 at Hunting Creek impressed Meier. “We were very, very confident in the selection of T-1,” Meier says.
 

Testing T-1

Before reaching a major championship site or even a guinea pig’s course, T-1 experienced a methodical research and development process. First stop was North Carolina, where superintendents encounter the bentgrass vs. Bermudagrass decision. “Unlike what some people think, we don’t conjure these up in the laboratory,” Brede says. “We go out and find them on golf courses.”

Brede visited a course converting to Bermudgrass to secure the last of the germ-plasma material found on the bentgrass putting surfaces. The 20-year-old greens had three- and four-feet sections that prospered under the heat and humidity. “So I picked this up like a kid in a candy store,” he says. Brede brought the sections back to his Idaho research facility for crossbreeding. He planted a two-acre putting green consisting of Poa annua and then using a grid system put in plugs of T-1 and other turfgrasses. Older varieties of bentgrass struggled when encountering the Poa annua, but the material from North Carolina started growing larger than 3 feet.

Tests also were conducted in Maryland and Ohio and the Green Course at Bethpage State Park on Long Island. The Green Course is used to test lower input maintenance techniques. “We knew we were on to something because we were competing very well against the Poa annua,” Brede says.

Initial movement of T-1 in the U.S. involved interseeding to transition from Poa annua back to bentgrass. The most successful periods of interseeding started around July 4th, which contrasted conventional growing practices. Brede says some courses in the Mid-Atlantic and Ontario were going from no bentgrass coverage to as high as 50 percent within one year of seeding. “The A and G series were out there, but they were for the elite golf courses that had the money to put into it,” Brede says. “What I wanted was a grass that looked very nice with less maintenance.”

Valhalla certainly qualifies as an elite golf course, and its greens are subject to rigorous maintenance practices such as frequent top-dressing and aerifying and the use of greenside fans to improve airflow. Greens were rolled by hand using large drums filled with water, instead of machines, during the week of the PGA Championship.

Valhalla’s greens typically run at around 11 on the Stimpmeter for member play, according to Meier. Under normal circumstances, Meier says T-1 requires less maintenance than other varieties of creeping bentgrass because it yields less organic material. Valhalla’s greens are less than three years old, but Meier says the prowess of the T-1 was evident when a maintenance volunteer discovered a plug with 10-inch roots during the week of the PGA.

“There are a lot of good grasses out there,” Meier says. “It’s just like any industry. Technology is changing, grass types are changing. But I think it will be a great grass that will continue to be looked at. I don’t know how fast it’s going to grow, but it’s been a fantastic grass for us.”

Scott says T-1 can “rise up” to the rigors of high-level tournament yet offers advantages for courses without the resources such as Valhalla because it produces less thatch than other varieties of bentgrass. “It gives excellent daily golf conditions that the everyday player can enjoy a good, true ball roll,” he says. “There’s not a lot of grain that develops. It’s a very upright grass. But other than that, it’s not a real aggressive thatch producer like some of the other bents that have been on the market for several years. They are good grasses, but they are very aggressive in producing organic matter from beneath the surface and you have to be pretty diligent on the management program. I find T-1 gives you a little more margin when you can’t be that aggressive. It still performs well.”

Willard likes the flexibility T-1 provides. Hunting Creek also uses the variety on its tees and Willard says divots are healing quicker because of T-1’s resilient qualities. “You can groom it however you like, brushing, backcutting, doublecutting, verticutting or using groomers on your mower and it making it pretty tight,” he says. “If you need to heal, it will lay down and move for you too. It can heal very quickly.”

Stories of 10-inch roots in August and daily maintenance options are what Brede envisioned when he visited North Carolina 20 years ago. He considers the major-championship exposure a bonus.

“Internationally, it’s become a big variety,” Brede says. “It’s slower to catch on in the U.S. for a variety of reasons. People are slow to adapt. I think the PGA will go a long way because people saw it on a transition zone course in the middle of summer and it’s doing absolutely fantastic. I think that will give it a real good kick in the pants.”

Guy Cipriano is GCI’s assistant editor.