Wonderful water watchers

The only clouds that matter in Chris Warrick’s fairway management program aren’t found on a phone, tablet or computer screen.

Warrick is beginning his third season as the superintendent at Highland Country Club, a private 18-hole course traversing enchanting land amid towering pines in the small western Georgia city of LaGrange. A limited water-storage capacity and years of decisions to protect greens forces Warrick to rely on precipitation to prevent 25 acres of 419 Bermudagrass fairways from withering.

No cloud-based platforms to start and stop irrigation cycles. Just hours of staring at overhead clouds, studying radars and analyzing weather reports. Unlike every peer Warrick knows, a work life without fairway irrigation requires thorough sleuthing and predicting, because there’s no backup plan to water in fertilizer and plant protectants. “I kind of feel like a detective more than a superintendent sometimes,” he says.

Until a conversation for this story, Warrick thought he might be alone, an ambitious superintendent trying to meet and exceed expectations without arguably the most intricate — and expensive — golf course maintenance tool. Warrick’s previous work history included stints at well-funded clubs with significant budgets. Capabilities stored in digital clouds allowed Warrick and his co-workers to overcome stretches without rain clouds.

Weather dictates every decision made by every superintendent in every region. The consequences of those decisions are amplified when attempting to maintain large swaths of scrutinized playing surfaces without irrigation.

“You’re very much limited to what the weather gives you,” Warrick says, “and the weather isn’t always cooperative.”

In Durhamville, New York, a small town 30 miles east of Syracuse, the weather gives Old Erie Golf Club patrons distinct fairway conditions and aesthetics. Built by a local farmer, the 9-hole, daily-fee course has existed for 55 years without a fairway irrigation system.

Superintendent Matthew Woodcock grew up playing Old Erie and purchased the course with his wife, Jill, in March 2021. Woodcock never thought much about playing a course without fairway irrigation until he switched careers in 2019 and joined the turf team at nearby Turning Stone Resort. The training at Turning Stone, which features three 18-hole courses built in the early 2000s, introduced Woodcock to the economics and science of golf course management.

The economics of operating a course without fairway irrigation make sense for Old Erie. Woodcock devotes the majority of his resources to providing the best possible greens that can be played for $20. Old Erie’s fairway conditions vary by season. Summers offer the best opportunities for significant ball roll; spring and fall provide the best aesthetics. Fairways comprise around 15 acres, utilizing a blend of fescue, bluegrass, ryegrass and seaside bentgrass planted by the original owner.

“All those grasses thrive in different conditions and it’s really interesting to watch them bounce through the different seasons, because different grasses are growing a lot nicer at different times of the year,” Woodcock says. “During the spring and fall, they are green and they look great. During the summer, the low areas are very tolerant to not getting water, but the humps are not so much. They will brown out and they will go dormant.”

Woodcock doesn’t fret over pairing product applications with precipitation. The fertilizer blend he purchased for fairways upon acquiring the course in 2021 hasn’t left the mechanic’s bay. His fertilizer and plant protectant program consists of treating 50,000 square feet of greens and another 50,000 square feet of collars and approaches. He sparingly treats tees with any remaining product.

“I think what makes golf unique is that it’s played on a perfectly imperfect surface,” Woodcock says. “There’s a place in the golf industry for those ultra-manicured, green, wall-to-wall perfect courses. But at the same time, courses like our course and some other courses in this area, we put almost all our effort into our greens, and we have incredible putting surfaces. The rest of the course is like how golf was designed and how Old Tom Morris thought of golf. It was played on a pasture and, funny enough, our course was built on a farm.”

Donald Ross, one of Old Tom Morris’s trainees, designed nine holes for Highland County Club in 1922. Joe Finger designed the second nine in 1972. The club installed a center-line fairway irrigation system, but financial difficulties hindered funding needed for repairs and upgrades and expanding water-storage capacity. The club’s primary water source is a lake surrounding the eighth, 16th and 17th greens. Warrick recently measured the bottom of the lake and discovered its depth averages around 6 feet. Six straight days of irrigating greens in the heat of last summer depleted the lake to the point where “on that sixth day, the lake was so low that it was starting to worry me,” Warrick says.

“If you don’t have enough water to water everything, you have to pick what you’re going to water,” he adds. “And you’re going to water the greens. That’s just the harsh reality the club faced when it went through hard economic times.”

Warrick has called his predecessors to better understand the history of the fairway irrigation system and functional capabilities and placement of heads. Highland Country Club has another 1¼-acre lake fronting the second green, but damage to the pump and pumphouse make efficiently shifting water to the other lake impractical, although Warrick is investigating ways to revive water-transferring possibilities.

Despite the challenges, Warrick produces solid fairway conditions, with the Georgia weather typically fostering peak fairway playability and aesthetics in early fall.

“We’re far enough South to where we catch that rainy season in Florida with the hurricanes and tropical storms,” he says. “That starts mid-July, so July, August and September, we get a pretty good amount of rainfall. The rain then starts slowing down toward early to mid-September, and we’re all watered up when temperatures drop to the mid-80s and maybe even the low-80s. That’s just prime Bermudagrass growing weather.”

Favorable spring weather, dry yet not too hot, in April and May yielded desirable fairway conditions for Highland Country Club’s past two member-guest tournaments. The annual event is contested the first weekend in June. “Let’s say we’re dry and windy, which it has been the past two years. That dries the Poa out and kills it right before our member-guest,” Warrick says. “It has landed on the perfect week the last two years. Dry and fast is good for member-guest conditions.”

Being in a humid subtropical climate zone means weather extremes. The climate makes timing product applications and cultural practices on fairways one of the trickiest parts of Warrick’s job. He switched from a granular to a foliar fertility program, because if it rains too hard following a granular application, intense pellet accumulation in low spots can kill turf. He uses higher rates of water when applying foliars to increase a product’s chances of penetrating the surface.

“I have come up with some good programs,” Warrick says. “We’re doing enough to where we are not receding on the tees and fairways. We might not be drastically gaining, but we’re not receding. That’s a very important aspect of it.”

The past three decades of Don Beck’s career involves developing and tweaking programs to satisfy a private club membership enjoying a course without fairway irrigation. Beck is the longtime superintendent at Fishers Island Club on the eponymous island on the eastern end of Long Island Sound. A 97-year-old Seth Raynor and Charles Banks design, Fishers Island Club is ranked ninth on Golf Digest’s list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses. Experiencing 33 acres of fairways blending chewings fescue, creeping red fescue and colonial bentgrass in an authentic state on the seclusion of an island endear the course to members and guests.

“We have big, wide fairways and that’s part of the nature of why the membership wants it unirrigated,” Beck says. “It’s a true links where it plays firm and fast and gives you angles into a lot of greens. It’s just the way the members want it.”

Fishers Island Club supports most of its 16,000 annual rounds from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Peak summer play can coincide with prolonged dry periods. The longest drought during Beck’s tenure lasted 120 days in 1999. “We just had to wait it out,” he says. “Everything turned brown. We had irrigation on tees, greens, approaches … that’s about it.”

For most of the year, growing conditions are benign, according to Fisher. Trees are minimal and decades of growing the same grasses promotes the establishment of deep roots. Fairway dormancy, if it occurs, begins in June and rarely extends into September.

Spring and fall are the wettest seasons on the island, and Beck uses a weather consultant to help time product applications and cultural practices. Aerification occurs before the club opens for play in early May and again following Labor Day. The course closes the last weekend of October.

Beck started his first golf course maintenance job at a course that didn’t have fairway irrigation at the time: Pequot Golf Club in Stonington, Connecticut. Advances in wetting agent technology represent the biggest change in maintaining fairways without supplemental irrigation since Beck entered the industry. But experience teaches him that patience is the best tool for overcoming a drought without fairway irrigation.

“A little Mother Nature goes a long way,” he says. “If you don’t do anything to screw it up, it usually bounces back pretty good.”

Neither brown nor dry shocks or bothers Greg Brooking, the superintendent at Natchez Golf Club at Duncan Park.

The 18-hole municipal course Brooking oversees possesses a fairway irrigation system on just nine holes. Brooking grew up playing the Mississippi course in the 1960s and ’70s, when it consisted of the nine holes designed by Scottish pro Seymour Dunn. The holes, which comprise the current back nine, opened in 1916 and the city has never added fairway irrigation to them. Fairway conditions were primitive during Brooking’s childhood.

“We had a rule when we played as children that you could ‘get grass,’” the 66-year-old Brooking says. “People don’t know what get grass means. That means you can roll your ball around off the dirt until you found a piece of grass. You could then put your ball on that grass. It’s just insane to think of.”

The process of elevating fairway conditions without an irrigation system commenced in the 1960s with the transition from common Bermudagrass to 328 Bermudagrass greens, according to Brooking. Years of placing greens clippings and aerification plugs in fairways led to improved turf coverage. “By hook or crook,” Brooking says, “areas where that 328 is are now the most playable fairways grass I have seen in my life.” Brooking estimates coverage on the back-nine fairways was about 70 percent when he returned to Natchez in 2007 to lead the maintenance and management of his hometown course. He has expanded turf coverage by removing sod from areas where the clippings and plugs were dumped. The sod is transferred to bare spots. “It will eat the common Bermuda up,” Brooking says.

Consider it one of the most methodical fairway conversions in American turfgrass history. Location and climate made converting fairways without an irrigation system possible. A city resting on bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, Natchez averages close to 60 inches of annual rainfall. Every month averages at least 3 inches of precipitation. Timing product applications, Brooking says, is the toughest part of managing fairways without irrigation.

“I simply do not fertilize the back side until imminent rain,” he adds. “If it’s a deluge, I kind of have a problem. It will wash a lot of fertilizer away. That’s how I grew that grass on that side. I chose my fertilizer days for rain days and get it washed in. I can’t tell how many times I have had good, perfect rain. A slow half-inch over a six-hour period is just perfect.”

Brooking doesn’t encounter the same application timing dilemma on the other nine. The city added a second nine designed by Brian Ault in 1993. The Ault-designed holes are the current front nine. Fairways are covered with Tifway II Bermudagrass. An automatic irrigation system was installed when the city constructed the nine.

“What’s surprising is the condition of the back side is so good that golfers don’t know that the back side doesn’t have irrigation and the front does,” Brooking says. “The only time they know it is during a severe, severe drought. The back side will eventually go brown. It has to be so severe because Bermudagrass is such a drought-tolerant grass. It takes a lot to turn Bermudagrass brown.”

An accomplished golfer, Brooking is a proponent of minimal fairway irrigation. Unless Natchez is experiencing a drought, he only deploys front-nine fairway irrigation on swaths where players frequently hit shots.

“I never, but never, but never water a spot that’s not where a ball ends up,” he says. “I don’t water where the ball lands, I only water where the ball ends up. I call them ‘landing areas,’ but I don’t mean where the ball lands. I mean where it rolls to. Tees, greens, landing areas … we don’t do anywhere else.”

Brooking adds that he’s never seen dead turf on either nine due to lean irrigation practices or a lack of rainfall. “I prove it every day, we can do it with a lot less irrigation — or in the case of our back nine where there’s no irrigation.”

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