Summer’s gone, but not forgotten

There’s a difference between rain and irrigation water. There’s also a difference between a brutal and a tolerable summer.

Don Asinski succinctly articulates the differences — even when rain and unforgiving weather are non-existent.

On a late July Monday morning, Askinski traverses Forsgate Country Club. Whenever his utility vehicle stops, he glances upward. Gray blends with blue. Asinski desperately wants gray to fully overtake blue.

Forsgate Country Club needs rain. Thirty-four years in the business, including 6½ years as the superintendent at the 36-hole central New Jersey private club, have taught Asinski natural water produces healthier turf.

“The reality is,” Asinski says, “your irrigation is never going to be as pure as your rainfall. When you are stuck on irrigation for an extended period of time, the grass just looks a little weaker. After a good, soaking rain, it’s amazing how quickly the turf bounces back.”

Minds need rain, too. For nearly six weeks, Asinski and his team have been pulling four hoses per day, trying to keep 8½ acres of predominantly Poa annua greens and 53 acres of fairways alive and playable. The last six weeks have brought three-tenths of an inch of the good stuff.

“Around Week 4 of something like this it starts to get a little concerning,” Asinski says. “My assistant and I spoke about it the other day. We’re burned out. It’s not just, ‘OK, I’m working harder. Or I’m working longer.’ The main thing is just the stress of worrying about losing turf.

“To me, it’s a life-and-death kind of thing. I guess it would be justified if you lost turf, but we’re always looking for perfection.”

The rain Asinski expected in the afternoon never arrived. During a tough summer, it seems like everybody else gets the good stuff.

Anthony Hooks and Patrick Husby are everybody else. The pair leads the maintenance of Due Process Stable, an exclusive private club 25 miles east of Forsgate Country Club. Hooks and Husby are maintaining bentgrass greens, but they are enduring the same ordeal as Asinski. Little rain. Lots of heat. Abundant turf and personal stress.

“I have been talking to so many people and they’ll say, ‘We’ve never had a summer like this,’” Husby says a day after the potential dousing misses central New Jersey. “We have had summers like this, and I can remember them because I went through the entire summer. We haven’t been through the entire summer — yet. But this is a tough one.”

How do superintendents tactically and mentally handle the toughest stretches of the growing season? I visited central and lower northern New Jersey, a region filled with world-caliber clubs — and unworldly member expectations — in the middle of the summer of 2022 to learn how humans and turf overcome the enormous stress.

I saw bloodshot eyes and tanned skin, yet beautiful Poa annua and bentgrass playing surfaces. Courses were brown around the edges, yet green where it matters. Most members will never comprehend what it takes to provide an inspiring blend of playability and aesthetic, especially when the number of July days with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees surpasses the New York Yankees’ win total for the month. I learned more about the analytics behind moisture management, the golf industry’s version of “Moneyball.” I also realized there’s still a gritty art to keeping grass alive through heat, humidity and drought.

Perhaps insight from their experiences will help you when it gets brutal again in your area.

Turf tactics

Less mechanical stress

Mowing and rolling are huge parts of a golf course maintenance routine, and crew sizes have swelled to peak-season sizes by July. The temptation exists to allocate available labor to mowing. With bentgrass under enormous stress, Due Process Stable started a July week by mowing its entire short-grass palette, a sward consisting of 60 acres. The crew didn’t mow fairways, tees, approaches or collars again that week.

“We don’t have any problem doing what’s best for the plant,” Husby says. “That means if we go through a stretch where we don’t mow anything for days, so be it. If we mow greens one day, roll them or do nothing to them the next day, then so be it. We’re not under the gun to constantly be mowing and keeping up an 11 or 12 on the Stimpmeter. We explain it and let the members know what we’re doing is for the betterment of the course so we’re around for September.”

The Due Process Stable team alternated between greens mowing and rolling each day. The greens, according to Hooks, never fell below 10½ on the Stimpmeter.

Labor resources are reallocated to hand watering, with employees covering six-hole circuits. Mowing less frequently means Due Process Stable can devote as many as eight workers to syringing greens.

Don’t fear dry

Chris Boyle’s 25 years as superintendent at Mendham Golf & Tennis Club have taught him that drier is better — for plant health and for golfers. Temperatures went from comfortable (think low 80s) in advance of the club’s invitational conducted the weekend following July 4th to toasty (think reoccurring 90s) following the tournament. Boyle stayed patient as July went from nice to nasty.

“I’d rather it be dry than wet, because when you have problems with wilted and dormant grass, most of it is just dormant,” Boyle says. “When it starts to rain, it will green up again. Give me dry anytime.”

Lower fertility and a decade of topdressing “the heck out of” push-up Poa annua/bentgrass greens help Mendham Golf & Tennis Club’s putting surfaces withstand tough stretches. Boyle will often run overnight irrigation on greens and then only hand water hot spots the next day. Wetting agent usage helps retain moisture.

“Drier is better,” he says, “and golfers like fast and firm. We don’t go crazy hand watering. Some people would never want it, but our greens are push-up greens with XGD drainage. I don’t want anything else.”

Asinski also strives for Forsgate Country Club’s Poa annua/bentgrass greens to play bouncy without losing turf. “If you get your greens too lush, maybe they are going to look nice from a distance, but they are not going to play nice,” he says. “You are walking that tightrope. I want to keep our greens fast and firm, but I want to keep them alive. The quickest way to kill grass is by overwatering it. It’s a concern, especially when you are training new people on a hose and trying to make them understand that overwatering is the quickest way to get into trouble.”

Decision time

Montclair Golf Club director of golf course operations Michael Campbell employs two superintendents and two assistants to help him manage 36 holes. In July 2022, soil moisture readings consumed their end-of-day discussions. Irrigation runtimes are based on volume amounts. A paid meteorological service removes further guesswork from summer decisions.

“We have become more pinpoint in our watering,” Campbell says. “I’m probably smarter on when to do it and when not to do it. I feel like I’m in tune with the universe when it comes to humidity and stuff like that. I just know at 3 o’clock the humidity levels are going to drop. Our watering practices are driven more by what the humidity is than the heat.”

At Due Process Stable, evapotranspiration (ET) levels guide irrigation practices during dry stretches. Comfortable levels, according to Hooks, range from 0.16 to 0.18. Levels swelled above 0.2 for most of July. “You just can’t replace that amount of water out there,” Hooks says. Heavy irrigation on Sunday and Monday nights — Due Process Stables receives little Monday play and is closed for half of Tuesday for maintenance — and hand watering greens are practices adopted via using ET data that keep turf playable without causing disruptions on key golf days.

Data still doesn’t dictate decisions at every high-level private club. Golf course maintenance remains a gritty art for many superintendents. Forsgate owns one soil moisture meter. Asinski uses it for training new employees.

“I have been doing this for a while, and I kind of rely on a little bit of instinct more, just sticking a soil probe in, feeling the soil, seeing the soil,” Asinski says. “I will stop on the green when the guys are cutting cups just to put my hand on the soil to feel it. Do I rely on a soil moisture meter that much? When I’m training a guy, I will give him the moisture meter so he can get a better feel. It will help him.”

People-focused tactics

Days off and delegation

Fiddler’s Elbow supports 54 holes, making it the largest private golf club in New Jersey. The family-owned entity is striving to become an employer of choice in a market saturated with private clubs. Achieving that distinction means adopting a policy designed to ensure employees spend more time with family and friends. One of those policies involves giving assistant superintendents consecutive days off — even in the summer.

“They get Friday-Saturday or Sunday-Monday,” director of grounds and facilities Matt Willigan says. “We’re paying them more to work less. We’re not where we want to be with staffing yet, but it’s getting closer because of the employer-of-choice attitude the club has.”

Willigan, coincidentally, finds it tricky to get away from the course in the summer — or any other season. His family lives on the 600-acre property. “I have a 6-year-old and she’s smiling when I get home,” he says. “How can you be upset when you see that? And the club treats us so well. It’s tiring, but family doesn’t want me bringing work home.”

The brutal stretches — Fiddler’s Elbow received less than an inch of rain in July, a half-inch in the final two weeks of June and multiple weekends when temperatures exceeded 100 degrees — enervate Willigan less as his career progresses and he learns to delegate more.

“I have realized I can’t do it all,” says Willigan, whose team maintains 100 acres of fairways, 12 acres of greens and approaches, 10 acres of tees, and 250 bunkers. “I need people to help me do it, so I’m trying to build up the staff. Two days off a week for an assistant? Are you kidding me? I would go weeks without a day off when I was coming through the ranks. The club is committed to it. Let’s get more staff and ease the burden on everybody’s shoulders. Life is too short.”

An afternoon away

The Due Process Stable team boarded a luxury bus on August 3 and headed north on the Garden State Parkway and Interstate 95 to gaze at verdant turf brilliantly maintained by somebody else. Never mind that the New York Yankees lost to the Seattle Mariners. One afternoon away from the course, especially with relaxed co-workers, can reenergize an employee or turf team.

Taking the crew to a baseball game in the middle of summer is one example of how Hooks and Husby have evolved their summer management style. The pair also occasionally encourages fatigued employees to arrive later than usual in anticipation of an intense afternoon or take longer breaks in the middle of steamy days. Employees receive every other weekend off.

“I have been a pretty intense guy for the most part,” Hooks admits. “I stereotype, and I believe they really don’t make the young guys like they used to. I feel like we have to ‘coddle’ them a little bit, and we try to do different things to do that. The good news is when you do that, it shows great reward for them and us. It’s a double win. Sometimes I might call it ‘coddling,’ but really it’s what they need. We just didn’t know any better back then.”

X’s and O’s of turf management

Campbell studies the words and philosophies of football coaches. The season his team must demonstrate unyielding alertness consists of the three months before college and NFL teams begin their seasons. Decisions and discussions during the other nine months are designed to put turf into favorable summer positions. “Everything we do is to get through August,” Campbell says. “Everything.”

Campbell reiterates to his team that no lead — or, in this case, seemingly thriving turf — is ever safe.

“A lot of grass gets lost on Sundays for a reason,” he says. “Everybody is tired. We spend a lot of time in the winter talking about anything and everything that gives us an upper edge. We’re constantly rewriting the playbook. The trick, after a number of years, is how do you keep finding improvements? You can’t just slip into complacency.”

But … stuff happens

Decades of experience have taught Boyle that all cuts of turf will encounter tough summer cycles.

“I feel like every summer we lose a little bit of grass,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s from being too hot or too wet or too dry or too much play, whatever. We peak in June, we try to hold until our member-guest invitational weekend, we lose some ground in July and August — some years you lose it more than others — and by the last week of September, you’re usually back.”

Guy Cipriano is Golf Course Industry’s editor-in-chief.