Heavy traffic tips

Rancho Park Golf Club has consistently seen more than 100,000 rounds at its 18-hole course every year but one since it was first recorded in 1960. While this is good for the operator, the city of Los Angeles, it can keep the maintenance crew on its toes.

In 2005, 115,250 rounds were played on the 18-hole course, which opened as Rancho Golf Club in 1922. It was originally designed by Herbert Fowler but was redesigned by Billy Bell, with the help of George Von Elm, in 1949 after the city of Los Angeles bought the course. It has played host to an array of tournaments, including the PGA Championship, U.S. Open and Los Angeles Open. The course is known as the place where Jack Nicklaus got his first paycheck and the 18th hole was the scene of Arnold Palmer’s infamous 12-stroke hole.

Course superintendent Calvin White suspects the club’s storied history is one of the reasons the course usually ranks from No. 1 to 3 in the country for number rounds played. The course’s location doesn’t hurt either, he says. It sits in Western Los Angeles, where there is a fairly wealthy population and a large number of golfers. Also, because it sits near the coast, it has more moderate temperatures than some of the courses located more inland, White says. It also doesn’t hurt that it is a municipal course and the green fees are relatively affordable, he adds.

Another reason for the high turnout, of course is the condition of the playing surface. Keeping it maintained can be a feat, considering the high-volume, year-round play means a lot of feet and carts test the turf, which leads to stress. Through a combination of cultural, preventive and reactionary practices, White and his crew of 15 full-time and 11 part-time maintenance workers keep the playing surface as healthy and resilient as they can.

The biggest challenge is the golf cart traffic, White says. Most of the holes don’t have tee-to-green cart paths.

“It’s always a struggle to maintain the grass at the start and end points of the cart paths,” he says. The crew patches the worn parts by sodding and reseeding the areas.

The greens are fairly new, sand-based and USGA-specified, so they hold up fairly well to the traffic, White says. They were planted as bentgrass but have mostly converted to Poa annua. He keeps them at heights of 5/32 down to 1/8 inch. Heights any lower would promote stress, he says. If the course is having a major tournament, he will get the greens as fast as 9 or 9.5, but no faster.

The greens are maintained with cultural practices that help the course thrive.

“The most important thing we do is we’re very regular with feeding on the greens,” he says. “We’re consistently putting down 1/4 pound of nitrogen down every two weeks.”

The program also includes preventive fungicide applications.

It also helps that the course has two sets of greens, so the course never has to shut down for routine maintenance. One set of greens can have a break or undergo maintenance while the other is open for play.

“As far as the tees and fairways go, we just work around play,” he says.

The staff also has to work around a noise ordinance. There are homes close to half the course, so the crew can’t operate loud equipment in those areas before 7 a.m.

The tees and fairways are kikuyagrass. “We don’t get near the dormancy that some of the other courses get because we’re closer to the ocean and it stays warmer during the winter months,” he says.

He tries to aerate the course three to four times a year to prevent compaction, including 1/4-inch-tine aeration on the greens as well as larger tine aerations.

Precise watering is another stress prevention tool. Be careful not to over- or under-water, especially on the greens, White says.

The practices have helped the course attract a high volume of golfers perennially. Rounds in the game of golf in general have dropped, and this is reflected at Rancho Park, where rounds were in the 130,000 to 140,000 range several years from 1960 to 1990, but now average 118,000. Still, that is a lot of traffic, and the crew keeps up with it well, White says.

“Most superintendents wish they had more staff, and we could definitely put out a little better product with more staff, but every superintendent could say the same thing,” he says. “It’s a bit of a struggle with the rounds and noise ordinance concerns, but the course withstands the traffic pretty well.”