TURF MANAGEMENT: Winter tee management

For some, golf is a seasonal game played over the warm spring and summer months and cool, crisp days of fall. When winter arrives, like the courses they consume, golfers hibernate or get their fix by heading South.

That said there are still many North American courses that remain open throughout the winter. While good for golfers, this causes a host of challenges for superintendents to minimize damage to the turf, especially the tees. So, what’s the solution?

Don Singlehurst, superintendent at Royal Colwood Golf Club in Victoria, British Columbia, says winter play on Vancouver Island is one of the benefits of a mild climate.

The private course, which was established in 1931, features Douglas firs and majestic Garry oaks. Perennially ranked as one of the top 20 courses in Canada, Royal Colwood is also one of a select few in the world to have received a Royal designation from King George V when it opened.

With this regal stamp of approval come high hopes from its membership.

"The expectations of members are that unless there is snow on the ground golf can be played," says Singlehurst. "Our job as turf professionals is to protect the course and provide reasonable course conditions. Delaying tee times due to frost is a daily task through the winter months, judging when to allow play to begin is based on the severity of the frost and the point at which the grass plant will not be crushed or punctured."

With the demand for winter play increasing, mainly due to better clothing and course drainage, damage to Royal Colwood’s tees is unavoidable, Singlehurst says. He adds that the bottom line for all superintendents to consider is how much damage is tolerable.

"I have found big multiple tee decks, which allow a constant rotation, do well over the winter months," he says. "The use of mats is not permitted at my club and previous experience has shown excessive damage from foot traffic directly around the mats can be quite substantial. We will do a winter fertility application as well as a preventive fungicide application in late October; we may follow up with another in December depending on the weather. We will then become very aggressive with aeration, topdressing and overseeding in late February and early March to bring the tees back into shape for April."

What if you’re not blessed with an abundance of extra acres to expand your tee decks? That’s a situation Patrick Quinlan, superintendent at Madison (N.J.) Golf Club in Madison – a 9-hole private course with 200 members – knows all too well. Established in 1896, the course was one of the first golf clubs in the United States; today, it has no room to expand.

"Five of our holes are par 3s," explains Quinlan. "The tees are too small for the amount of play we get, so there is a lot of damage around them in the winter."

Since there is no room to expand the tees, Quinlan shares a couple of his innovative solutions. He changes the tee markers to prevent some wear and tear and his members are pretty good about playing from these new positions. And, for those members who failed to play from these temporary tees, Quinlan came up with an idea after attending the 2005 PGA Championship.

"There are some tees where members refuse to play where I’ve put the new markers, so what I’ve done is use sod staples and put deer netting down on the grass," he explains. "If they walk on it with their spikes they’re going to fall and hurt themselves. It’s worked tremendously.

"When I was at the PGA Championship in 2005 at Baltusrol, I noticed that’s what they did to keep the pros from practicing on the tees they didn’t want them on. I got that idea and said, ‘That’ll work for me.’ The deer netting really works. It’s done around December 15 when the club officially closes. I post signs and make everybody aware of it; it certainly has reduced the wear and tear on our tees in the wintertime."

Quinlan also makes his membership use the ladies’ tees throughout the winter.

"It’s okay if those tees get chewed up because they don’t really get chewed up at any other time of the year."

Overseeding tees
Some superintendents also overseed their tees in the fall to build up the turf before winter’s long embrace. Quinlan uses ryegrass as well as bentgrass on tees with heavy applications in the fall right up until the first snowfall.

"That really helps fill those tees in and gets them ready for the winter by getting as much grass growing on them as possible," he says. "I also put a heavy coating of sand on the tees to protect the crowns from winter play. And, I also use mostly organic fertilizer applications throughout the entire growing season, which gives the tees the strength they need going into the fall as well as coming out in the spring."

Back on Canada’s West Coast, Paul Robertson’s facility doesn’t allow golf when there’s frost. However, the golf course superintendent at Victoria Golf Club – a private, heritage course established in 1893 – adds that they have not been successful at keeping members off the frozen turf.

"The reality is this is their course to consume any way they wish, which in the winter usually means served over ice," he jokes.

A couple general practices Robertson has adopted year-round to help prevent wear and tear on his tees are to move and designate teeing areas 365 days of the year and keep the tee blocks narrow to confine the wear and to allow the set-up staff to flip blocks from side to side.

"We also started to square old tees that have become oval over the years," he adds.  "This small change provided much needed teeing space." 

In his 10 years on what Robertson dubs the "wet coast," he has tried it all, including the following:

• overseeding weekly,

• increasing fertility,

• increasing potassium,

• adding soil amendments,

• deep tine/aerating mid-winter,

• judicious divot repair, and

• rebuilding tees with drain tile three feet apart, using straight sand, using straight soil amendment, adding crumb rubber and every combination in between.

"Based on my experience, the one piece of advice I can give is to save your time and money," Robertson advises. "Let the golfers hack the tees to pieces, lightly fill divots to avoid crowning the tee, topdress as often as you can and prepare to plug, sod, aerate and overseed several times in the spring to bring your tees back to life."

Prepare for take-off at Uplands
Uplands Golf Club in Victoria, British Columbia, is open year-round. According to Brian Youell, superintendent at Uplands, the course does 125 to 150 rounds per day in the winter. When he first started at the club in 1980, the maintenance staff laid out mats during the winter months to prevent tee damage. In the mid-1980s, though, the tees were redesigned, so now there’s no need for rubber mats.

"If you’re stuck playing 12 months per year, renovating to make a larger tee space is a great solution," Youell says. "The biggest thing for us was to build what I call ‘runway’ tee decks. These are larger tee decks that are more functional. Our tees are 40-feet wide by 100-feet long and are two tiers, so we can easily move the blocks around to prevent wear and tear.

"Because handicaps are frozen in the wintertime, the other thing we do at Uplands is move the men’s (blues) into the white section, which might not receive as much play in the summertime," he adds. "Conversely, the course plays longer in the wintertime because of the rain since we get 35 to 40 inches of rain in the winter, so we also move the tee blocks forward."

Capilano Golf & Country Club in West Vancouver, British Columbia, is yet another golf course that never officially closes. However, because of its elevation – some 400 to 700 feet – the course typically gets more snow than other courses in Vancouver, which causes it to close up to 80 days a year.

Jamie Robb, assistant superintendent at Capilano, says when the course is open, all tees are in play, but since there are so few rounds in the winter months, the wear and tear is minimal.

"We put out a typical driving range mat on our par 3s," he says. "We put them right on the cart path if they are wide enough or beside the cart path to prevent wear on the turf because we get so much rain. On average, we get 100 inches of rain per year; the majority falls between October and March."

Robb and the Capilano grounds crew also reduce the tees from five down to two in the winter – one men’s and one women’s; this is usually done at the end of October.

"We do that both because of a lack of labor and to prevent wear and tear on the tees," he says. "Then, in early November, we put the mats down on top of some fresh gravel so members have a nice flat surface to hit off." GCI