Controlled growth

A total of 95 percent of superintendents consider PGRs important to their entire agronomic program, according to a GCI survey.

 

Results showed 62.4 percent of superintendents rely on PGRs as critical to the overall program. An additional 32.6 percent considered them important for support. On average, most superintendents who use PGRs do so because it’s what their mentor taught them to use, or PGRs have just always been a part of their program to begin with.
Only 4.5 percent of superintendents say PGRs aren’t important to their agronomic program, and less than 1 percent call them unimportant.

 

As they continue to be important to superintendents, more PGRs are being used on the course regularly as well. Half of superintendents use more PGRs now than they did three years ago, building on increased need to be responsible with inputs and labor costs.
Almost as many have maintained the same level of PGRs in their overall program, but fewer than 3 percent used them any less. Once superintendents incorporate PGRs into a program, they tend to only use more of them over time if they make any change.

 

Nearly 60 percent of all superintendents are spending more on PGRs than they have in the past three years. The majority, a total of about 42 percent of superintendents had an increase between 1 and 10 percent. Beyond that number, 15 percent had a larger increase, but even that chunk is larger than all the superintendents who saw a decrease combined.
On its own, almost a third saw no change to their PGR budget overall.

We collected this information in partnership with SePRO through a SurveyMonkey questionnaire sent to GCI readers during spring of 2015. We received about 300 responses from superintendents about their usage of PGRs on the course.
Check out more results and see photos of courses covered PGRs by looking up #PGRsandPonds on Twitter.