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Zoysiagrass was introduced to the United States from its native Asia in 1892. Golfers have long celebrated its virtues, citing its carpet-like texture and feel that make it a wonderful playing surface.

Superintendents in warmer climates, where zoysiagrass thrives, appreciate that it requires less maintenance inputs than other warm-season turfgrasses.

While zoysiagrass’s thick texture is ideal for fairways and tees, it was for many years considered impractical for use on greens because it many believed its thick blades would make the putting surface slower than desirable.

That mindset has evolved as researchers have developed strains of zoysiagrass suitable for greens.

The movement toward zoysiagrass greens has its origins in 1982 when Dr. Milt Engelke from Texas A&M University and Dr. Jack Murray, then with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, made a trip to Asia and brought back zoysiagrass samples from throughout the continent, from the Korean Peninsula to Malaysia.

Due to illness, Murray eventually sold his material to Bladerunner Farms outside San Antonio. But Engelke brought his samples back to Texas A&M where the research effort he helped launch continues today under Dr. Ambika Chandra, a professor and the assistant director of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research & Extension center in Dallas, where she’s been since 2007.

“At the Dallas center we are maintaining a clonal copy of that original collection,” Chandra says. “Over the past 40 years we have lost a few because these have to be maintained in a vegetative form in order to maintain their genetic integrity. Right now, we have about 650 plants that we have maintained and that gives us an advantage, having that collection, the foundation for the breeding work.”

Engelke took on the long-term task of developing new strains of zoysiagrass. The first to be introduced was Diamond, which reached the market in 1996. It was intended for use on fairways and tees. But Engelke was approached by numerous facilities having challenges with Bermudagrass or creeping bentgrass greens, often due to shade or salinity issues. Engelke suggested they convert their greens to Diamond, the finest-textured zoysiagrass available at the time.

“I think that was the moment when people really realized that zoysia (could be utilized) on putting greens,” Chandra says. “There was a need that existing species of turfgrass were not able to fill, whether it was shade or salinity. That’s what really opened up people’s minds about zoysia for putting greens.”

The team at Texas A&M went on to create Lazer — what Chandra calls “the next generation of zoysia.”

“Diamond was crossed with a species called Zoysia minima,” she says. “It’s a species native to New Zealand. Minima is a very small, tiny little beady plant, very fine texture, dwarf, good color, but what it lacks is adaptability. In our environment, it will not survive the winter or other stresses.

“We took minima and we crossed it to Diamond, which we know is adapted, and we created Lazer. Meantime, Bladerunner Farms is doing its own work in the area of zoysiagrasses and in recent years has introduced Prizm and Primo for putting greens.”

Ken Mangum had a long career as the director of golf courses and grounds at the Atlanta Athletic Club. During his time at the famed club, he guided the conversion to zoysiagrass fairways on the Highlands and Riverside courses. Today, Mangum is a consultant and one of the industry’s foremost authorities on zoysiagrass on all playing surfaces, including greens.

“The leaves come off the rhizomes at 90 degrees, so you don’t need as many cultural practices as you do on the Bermudagrasses,” he says. “It’s got great cold-weather tolerance. You don’t have to cover (zoysiagrass greens) as much as you do Bermudagrass. You hardly see any ball marks on them, because it is a tougher grass. If you’ve got shade, if you’ve got cloudy weather, or if you’ve got cold or you’ve got a limited crew or a limited budget, it can fill a lot of different needs that people have.”

Zoysiagrass on greens today

Almost two dozen golf courses, all of them in warm climates in southern states — save for one in California — have installed zoysiagrass greens.

Bo LeHew is the general manager at the Golf Club of Texas, a 24-year-old semi-private facility in San Antonio with a Lee Trevino-designed golf course. The club prospered for more than a decade but closed in 2013 after a severe drought caused course conditions to deteriorate.

When it reopened two years later, the golf course had been tweaked by architect Roy Bechtol and completely regrassed with zoysiagrass — Zeon on tee boxes, JaMur on fairways and L1F on greens.

LeHew was hired during the regrassing effort. It took several years for the greens to respond how ownership wanted. Ironically, they were too firm and approach shots that landed on the putting surfaces tended to bound off the back.

But over the last year, LeHew and superintendent Emilio Alvarez adopted new maintenance protocols for their greens. Simply put, they had been getting too much water.

“Zoysia has a thicker blade of grass,” LeHew says. “So, if you water it every day, it’s going to go down about an inch and then just stop. You’re filling up its stomach but it’s not getting into the intestine. In not watering it every day, you’re allowing (the moisture) to hit that one-inch mark, and then all the grass root system that’s four or five inches underneath that and is thirsty is actually getting down through because it’s not getting trapped at the top.”

The greens at the Golf Club of Texas are normally watered every other day, but sometimes less often if conditions dictate fewer irrigation inputs. LeHew notes how the greens have responded to the change in watering protocols.

“They’re greener than they’ve ever been,” he says. “They’re more lush. They’re exactly what you would want. It’s amazing how something so simple as watering it less (improves performance). It’s amazing the difference in just six months.”

Don Garrett has led the golf course maintenance efforts at The Walker Course at Clemson University, a semi-private facility in northwest South Carolina, since 1999. He assumed his post 3½ years after the course opened for play. Conditions were, to put it delicately, unsatisfactory.

A Clemson turfgrass graduate, Garrett had a personal and a professional stake in his new assignment.

“I’m from this area,” he says. “I’m from right outside of Clemson — at least my dad was. I was an Air Force brat for 14 years. When he retired, we moved back here. This is home and my wife is from nearby.

“It was home but also, coming to Clemson, I was like, ‘This golf course has not performed. You need to go in and make it perform and you cannot fail because you’re right here in front of the university and turf professors I had and people you know and friends and family.’”

When Garrett arrived, the greens were bentgrass. When some clubs in the area began converting to ultradwarf Bermudagrass, Garrett was hesitant to follow because of shade issues. Several of his green sites are in shaded areas and the trees producing that shade are located on adjacent properties. He experimented with ultradwarf Bermudagrass on a chipping green, but shade concerns remained.

Garrett was swayed toward zoysiagrass greens after a USGA seminar highlighting the approach. It was suggested he could install zoysiagrass on shaded greens and ultradwarf Bermudagrass elsewhere — two South Carolina courses had taken that approach — but Garrett demurred. “I didn’t really want to manage two grasses,” he says.

The decision was made to convert all 18 greens to zoysiagrass. The conversion was scheduled for an eight-week stretch in summer 2015, following the conclusion of the university’s golf camps. The project was timed so the course would be open the week before Clemson’s first home football game.

Garrett finds managing zoysiagrass similar to maintaining Bermudagrass putting surfaces. “I think it’s pretty similar to ultradwarf,” he says. “I talked to other superintendents in the area that had them. It’s a lot like managing ultradwarf. We use a little less fertility, a little less nitrogen. Zoysia doesn’t need as much. Probably a little less topdressing than you do on an ultradwarf, but all in all, it’s pretty much the same.”

Since converting to zoysiagrass, Garrett is seeing reduced disease pressure. “I think fungicide- and disease-wise, the ultradwarf seems to get more disease than the zoysia does. We just haven’t seen hardly any disease with it.”

The zoysiagrass greens are also having a favorable impact on Garrett’s bottom line. “We spray a little less than half of what we were treating with in fungicides,” he says. He was also able to eliminate 12 large fans that were used to improve circulation around the bentgrass greens. He estimates that change has trimmed utility bills by $28,000 annually.

As far as performance is concerned, Garrett knows his greens may not provide as fast a putting surface as bentgrass or Bermudagrass. But he doesn’t see that as problematic.

“They’ve performed very well,” he says. “It’s hard to get them very fast. (But) we in the golf industry, in my opinion, have gotten carried away with green speed. We talk about growing the game and then somebody comes out, a first-time golfer or somebody wanting to take up the game, and they can’t get the ball in the hole because they get to the green and they can’t control it because of green speed.”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer, senior Golf Course Industry contributor and host of the Wonderful Women of Golf podcast.