Yes, Sensei!

On average, a golf course has about 80 billion blades of maintained turfgrass.

Ever attempt to count them?

At one luxury Southern California retreat, a blade-counting micro-practice is ensuring primo playing conditions for golf guests and providing its turf frontman a key gauge in assessing the seasonal transition to ryegrass.

Founded in 2004 as a private estate property with a golf centerpiece, Sensei Porcupine Creek in Rancho Mirage, California, was long a unicorn in the golf-rich Coachella Valley. The property was purchased in 2011 by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison (presently charting as the globe’s fourth-wealthiest person) and maintained such status of premier, personal estate privatude until last year, when the property transitioned to an opulent wellness retreat, bearing the Sensei brand handle first debuted via Ellison’s sister property on the Hawaiian island of Lanai.

With the golf course set as the nucleus amid a Sensei think-tank of wellness experts and guest activations, the first year of outside access opportunity saw a queue eager to enter the gates.

“We had an amazing first season,” says Richard Ruddy, director of golf at Sensei Porcupine Creek. “The guest feedback was phenomenal, from the course conditions to the overall experience.”

Coupled with the property’s menu of lavish allures and profound self-betterment, the chance to experience pristine fairways and immaculate manicuring amid intentionally low (low) volume is atop the table for high-end playing guests.

“This is the closest you’ll get to having your own private golf course,” Ruddy adds. “We’ve had guests come visit from a lot of great clubs around the country, and that is the big, special thing they keep touching on. The end game here is not to just build up volume; we’re going to protect that experience of being on your own golf course.”

While the Sensei experience may not be in the scorecards of the proletariat, a unique agronomy practice for seasonal overseed appraisal is indeed available to any superintendent who transitions turf to ryegrass come autumn.

Furthering a technique he’d learned at a previous desert property, Gerad Nelson, director of agronomy and landscape at Sensei Porcupine Creek, eyes the golf grounds with some seriously microscopic vision.

Following the autumnal overseed of tees, rough and fairways (he’s gone to year-round MiniVerde for greens), Nelson assesses his grow-in by cutting out square-inch samples of ryegrass (a half-inch down) and counting the blades, one by one.

“This gives me a gauge of where I’m at,” Nelson says. “I’ll do it in two different types of locations on different parts so the course: I’ll do it in an area that looks really good and, early on (post-overseed), I’ll also go to an area that looks thin.”

From blade to bounty, Nelson’s entire overseed process has turned the heads of his Sensei colleagues.

“Just the way he puts seed out, the way the overseed is done, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Ruddy says. “Typically, you have your rate and the spreaders and go out and spray, right? But he has folks going out in teams beforehand, marking lines and making a grid of the entire course. If you were to come out right before or right after we seed, the whole place looks like some geometric map, with crossing grids and different color paints for different spread rates.”

The Hoganism of finding the “secret in the dirt” isn’t merely limited to those with club in hand.

“These guys don’t stop at anything for top quality and, yes, checking grass per-inch is part of that,” Ruddy adds. “Gerad gets in there. I’ve seen him on hands and knees on the driving range staring at grass and really getting a feel for what’s happening in that square inch, and then setting a plan accordingly. It’s getting in the turf with his pocketknife, cutting out the sample and then pulling apart blades in his fingers … five … 10 … Definitely not something I’ve ever seen before.”

Observing such specified practice in action is to watch with curiosity and wonder. To wit:

“You just start pulling them out,” says Nelson while counting individual blades, “one by one, and just go through each piece of ryegrass. So just look, this one is tiny, here’s a spindly one, this one is a decent size, hasn’t tillered yet … here’s a nice one, about ready to tiller.” He then drops one — yes, one — blade near his shoe, adding, “Darn it.”

A count of at least 25 blades per square inch gives Nelson confidence of a sound area, though it’s not at all uncommon to palm a sample of over 35 blades.

“If I’m checking, say, three weeks after overseed and the count is under 20, that’s concerning,” Nelson says. “But that’s a good time to check it. You want to check it when you can still get more seed out if you need to, and get it germinated. There’s still time. It will be young, but there’s still time. After that, guests start arriving, so you can’t just turn water on as easily as before. And with water at this point of the process, too much is detrimental and can create issues with wet grass, traffic, issues with the mowers, wet shade areas.”

Along with water, timing, and calendar considerations, the technique can pave a distinction between the time and costs of overseed and over seed.

“The thin areas are where this is most beneficial,” Nelson continues. “When you pull ’em out like this, you see the leaf stages, and the ryegrass plant has two or three leaf stages. In a thin area, let’s say you pull out the sample and count 20 or so plants. Then it’s, ‘OK, I don’t need to get crazy and waste a bunch of seed and put more down, because I know there’s grass there.’ But if you pull out the square inch and there are about 10, then it’s, ‘OK, let’s touch it up and reapply a bit more seed.’”

In the Palm Springs region and neighboring Southwest desert golf surrounds, superintendents hang their hat on a quality overseed season. An experienced understanding of ryegrass germination timeline proves crucial, as does full grasp of the tillering characteristic of ryegrass, which essentially sends out another plant from the original plant.

“This year, before the ryegrass had tillered and matured and gotten big, I’d find somewhere between 36 and 42 seedlings, maybe at the two- or three-leaf stage,” Nelson explains. “But, obviously, when it matures, the plant is gonna grow and spread and some of it will die out and fill the space. So, you’re not necessarily always going to have that 42 number; you may have outcompeted some of it.”

Working with a taut weather window in fall-to-winter before reopening to guests — where temps can swing from triple digits in early October to the low 40s in late November — is a key calendar consideration.

“When it’s still warm, it can be tough to tell with the Bermuda and the ryegrass, because, of course, they’re both still green,” Nelson says. “You just need to dig in there and make certain it’s your rye, or if you’re still seeing a lot of Bermuda.”

Though Nelson oversees a spotless property, that doesn’t mean his own hands aren’t dirty.

“Your eyes can be deceived when you just drive by in your cart and look and think, ‘Oh, it’s thin there,’” he says. “Yeah, it can look that way, but what’s really in there? You just need to get in there. Could be a bunch of ryegrass that still needs to mature.”

And while Sensei is a singular when it comes to a canvass of affluence, Nelson firmly believes that the blade-count technique is applicable to turf managers guiding any manner of public or private grounds.

“I think it’s a great tool,” he concludes. “It’s worked well for me and kept me in check, because I know I don’t have to get crazy and reapply seed to areas that don’t really need it. While it may appear that way to the eye, getting in there and pulling it out proves it.”

Judd Spicer is a Palm Desert, California-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.