Overseed ovation

Across the 121-course bounty of the golf-mad Coachella Valley, advances in the process and understanding of overseeding — especially greens — have enjoyed perpetual graduation.

What was once viewed as a seasonal autumn slog has now become an art form, a badge of area excellence among peers and an annual undercurrent of query, with those in the know asking across the valley, “How was your overseed this year?”

While golf growth in this prime Southern California pocket can be traced back to the mid-1950s, it wasn’t until three decades later that turf transitions to cool-season grasses became a necessity. Come the building boom of the 1980s, the area’s burgeoning base of superintendents could no longer roll with a “scorched earth” mentality during what had always been a population exodus in late spring.

“What really spawned it was the huge developments, like PGA WEST,” says recently retired superintendent Rick Sall. “The developments brought in more people, more homes and more people staying as full-timers. Prior to that era, this place was a ghost town come summer. But once people started staying, the expectation became annual instead of seasonal.”

Considered something of the desert’s “Agronomist Emeritus,” Sall’s vision of maintaining an annual golf destination proved crucially Socratic instead of skeptic.

In 1986, alongside a short list of top colleagues, Sall helped found an annual, informal overseed roundtable discussion. Based on the concept of making the Palm Springs region a better golf destination as a whole, the gathering served as complement to the Hi-Lo Desert Chapter of the GCSAA, which was founded in 1958.

“There were 20 guys, we met at The Springs Club (in Rancho Mirage) and we called it The Round Table because, well, their boardroom table was round,” Sall says with a smile in reflection. “We came up with 20 questions, asked them one at a time and went around the table. Stuff like, ‘How many days before you seed do you turn your water off?’ And when somebody had an outlier answer, it was, ‘OK, why do you do that?’ And that’s how the new ideas started to come along.”

With more building came more courses and, in turn, more inquiring agronomists. “When the construction was really booming here and we had a lot of guys coming in from different places, they were like sponges,” Sall says.

Over the years, with empathy came — and still comes — affirmation.

“If you hear 10 people answer the same question and one of those people answers the same way that you think, that’s a validation,” Sall says. “You just learned something. It’s like, ‘This guy is doing that, too. I’m not off the beam here.’”

In hindsight, The Round Table — which continues today as a more formalized overseed forum — may have had a greater impact on Coachella Valley golf than any turf or tournament.

“The Round Table is, by far, the best thing to happen to the desert golf industry,” says Tim Putnam, the director of agronomy at La Quinta Country Club since 2002. “Discussing these issues together, it continues to give ways to go about achieving this goal based on your golf course, the equipment you have on-hand, the time window, the size of your crew — all these variables play a part in how you’re going to attack the overseeding equation.”

The “happy accident”

Amid the building and course boom, overseeding greens with a combination of rye and bentgrass was en vogue.

“The technique then was really, really heavy ryegrass, and many people would put some bentgrass in there, too,” Sall says. “And the speed of the greens out here then, coming into season, … I mean, the lowest people mowed was, like, 5/32nds.”

In concert with bumpy autumn putting surfaces, the trend came with additional concerns.

“The guys who were doing the bentrass and ryegrass, once we got to transitioning in the summer, that bent would colonize into patches. If it was out in the open with decent air movement, you’d have to get disease to take it out,” Sall says. “You’d go to overseed the next season and have Bermuda over here and bentgrass patches over there. Very inconsistent surfaces. Ideally, you want all Bermuda when you go to overseed — and to treat it like an ally, not an enemy.”

As a chapter of area turf lore, while Sall was maintaining the dual courses of public and private play at what was then Canyon Country Club in Palm Springs — now Indian Canyons Golf Resort — a “happy accident” occurred.

“The 36 holes and the Canyon Hotel wanted to take advantage of the down time from the private clubs in October, and the idea was to overseed the day after Labor Day,” Sall explains. “So, I did it — and the result was abject failure on the greens. It just didn’t work. The Bermuda took over everything, and we started getting toward Thanksgiving and everything was Bermuda. It was starting to get colder and it was going to go dormant.”

Via the ill-timed effort, however, Sall discovered lemonade in his lemons.

“I’d be reading about Poa triv, went and got a bunch of it, and put down somewhere between four and five pounds (per green),” he says. “We were already open, so we just went out and spiked the greens, threw down all this seed and spiked them a few more times. We happened to get three days of this really nice rain, and then, just a couple weeks later, people from the private side of our 36 holes were playing on the public side where we put down the Poa, and they loved how they rolled and how they looked. And we’re like, ‘Wow! This really worked!’ It allowed us to mow lower on a grass that just didn’t grow as quickly and grew straight up.”

The technique set sail to an entirely new era of desert overseed theory.

“When we move into transition, Poa wants to leave,” Putnam says. “A perfect houseguest.”

Today’s Coachella Valley superintendents have refined styles to earn putting surface stripes from golfers ranging from expectant members to the world’s best players.

Putnam’s annual overseed tradecraft begins with slowing his watering two weeks before scalping, addressing any hot spots and then spraying growth regulator as the Bermuda matter shrinks down. As work begins on his greens (six at a time), Putnam sprays Primo in the morning and verticuts in two directions (with carbide tip verticutter blades) before mowing down with a triplex. The next day, another verticut and mow will ensue, if need be, before applying Scythe.

Feeling the burn has proved a key component of the modern greens overseed.

“The trend has been that guys aren’t turning the water off for as long a period of time, to not hurt the Bermuda, and to use the burning,” Sall explains. “For my Round Table presentation, I ask the question, ‘Will anybody who uses Scythe on your greens raise your hand,’ and when a lot of hands go up, I then say, ‘Leave your hand up if you’ll never do it again.’ Nobody’s hands has ever stayed up.”

Putnam follows the Scythe application with a brush technique over the burned tissue before a triplex then serves as vacuum.

“You just want as much upright Bermuda as you can get,” he says. “Get rid of the lateral stuff that keeps the seed up on top. But you also don’t want to renovate it so much that you just start getting nothing but dirt and no Bermuda, because then the seed will move around and there’s nothing to hold it in place and doesn’t hold water as well. It’s a fine line.”

A calendar matter

Across a full, diverse marquee of private clubs, resort courses and daily-rate plays, not all locales are built the same. Between member expectation and guest reckonings, the overseed onus is palpable come the desert’s peak season.

“It’s a love-hate relationship with overseeding. It is the most stressful time of year, but it’s what my whole career is built on,” says Putnam, whose club annually serves in the rotation for the PGA Tour’s American Express. “I’ve gotten where I have because I’ve been able to produce great conditions through overseeding. My members, my whole reputation with them is built on the overseed.”

Amid the pandemic-era rise in rounds, some grounds go for an early-season gamble in an effort to grab more of the area’s autumn market.

“Depending on where you’re at, you may not have as many days as you want,” says Jonas Conlan, director of agronomy across the three courses at Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage. “You’re being told how many days you’ve got.”

Having worked at desert properties ranging from resort plays to community courses to the area’s “super munis” to his present post, Conlan has seen first-hand the wide-ranging bottom lines.

“It could be revenue-driven or trying to capture more golfers in the months where many people are closed down,” adds Conlan, who has worked in the valley since 1997. “When I was at Indian Wells Golf Resort, we had 18 days from closed to back open. With that window, you have to be very creative, very organized, hope for some good weather conditions.”

Over time, the Knight of the Round Table has seen what can happen with attempts at an early overseed.

“You won’t fail every year in September,” Sall says, “but the odds are against you.”

Maximum with the mini?

While the greens technique employed by Sall, Putnam, Conlan and many across the valley has both survived and thrived amid Round Table scrutiny, area efforts with alternate methods ensue at many valley locales.

Borrowing the practice of myriad sites in the sister desert of Phoenix/Scottsdale, at least half a dozen Coachella Valley courses have started working with MiniVerde ultradwarf Bermudagrass on greens in recent years.

Gerad Nelson has spent nearly a decade as director of agronomy and landscape at Sensei Porcupine Creek in Rancho Mirage. Long the estate home of billionaire Larry Ellison, the property recently transitioned into an opulent wellness retreat, with the golf course as its centerpiece.

“Like a lot of courses, I had TifDwarf greens,” Nelson says, “and they became contaminated. It was like a mutated variety of grass that impacted multiple courses around 2013. It was just a very tough grass to maintain in the summer months, so, two seasons ago, I decided it was time to move away from that.

“The closer I looked at it, I thought that MiniVerde is a grass that you can have throughout the winter, and you just have to figure out how to maintain it so your speeds don’t get too quick. Come the late fall, you have to start coming up in height, before they go dormant, so you can manage those speeds.”

Turning his head toward the neighboring desert market grabbed Nelson’s collar.

“I initially looked out to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, where they’ve been doing some of the ultradwarfs longer,” he adds. “I reached out to guys at several types of courses out there. Obviously, the concern with MiniVerde is that Bermudagrass will go dormant in the winter. I asked a lot about how they handled it, how their players enjoyed it.”

Now working his greens sans overseed, the modest amount of play at Porcupine doesn’t dull lofty guest expectations. In concert with pigment application for aesthetic, Nelson has continually fine-tuned his MiniVerde routine.

“It’s a very aggressive, thatchy grass, so the biggest thing was ensuring the cultural practices — the aerification, the verticutting, the topdressing — when it’s actively growing,” he explains. “Otherwise, it can get away from you, get a bit spongey, nasty. The practices are the key, because once those cooler temps come in the fall season and the grass starts to go dormant, you’re stuck with what you have.”

In short time, though — even considering the dearth of round volume — Nelson has observed all manner of benefits.

“No overseed, so there’s one less thing you have to do. And then, in April, May, June, there’s no transition, so you basically get the same greens all year long,” he says. “That was the biggest thing for me, in having the most consistent putting surfaces throughout the year and not having to deal with the shoulder seasons. Beyond that, in November, December and January, you’re only mowing them once, maybe twice a week. So, there’s a lot less maintenance in the peak season.”

Further assets via absence of overseed have come across the bottom lines of labor and cost.

“In the winter, I can move around the team to do other things instead of mowing greens every single day,” Nelson says. “You’re also watering way less, you’re saving money and time on hand-watering and, with the cost of seed having gone up, you’re saving there, too.”

Circling the Round Table in theory, however, does find some skepticism going with a non-overseed.

“It’s a numbers game,” Putnam says. “The numbers on the thermometer and the number of rounds. I’d say if you’re under 20,000 rounds, maybe even less, weather conditions considered, maybe you could get away with it.”

The considerations have run valley-wide.

“For over a decade, and through our Round Table discussions, I’ve thought about, ‘Could we pigment?’” says Conlan, whose property hosts the PGA Tour Champions’ Galleri Classic. “I’ve seen all these videos of places that do it in other markets. But with the amount of play we get, there’s no way that we would be able to withstand the volume and have a quality product. And if you don’t have that quality product, then you don’t have a job.”

Working with non-overseeded MiniVerde greens, or perhaps an all-seasons turfgrass not yet available for market, remains a trend awaiting further discovery.

“There are universities trying to get the right grass types that could maybe stay a bit greener throughout the winter and could recover,” Conlan says. “But, to make a change, it’s going to have to be really, really good. If not, you’ll have upset people who are going to play elsewhere. It will take somebody in the right situation who could do it. But to put your reputation on the line, … I don’t think you’ll find a lot of volunteers.”

Perhaps the new era of overseeding will have to await the next Knight of the Round Table.

“Maybe there’s a Rick Sall in-the-wings,” Conlan concludes. “Somebody here or heading here with the tech and the creativity that Rick has, who can do some things down the road.”

Counters Putnam: “That’s like saying there’ll be another Tiger Woods.”