Bogey Hills Country Club Golf Course Maintenance: Collars, Fringes, Wraps or Death Rings?

Ok, so here we go... The big one! My nemesis, the dreaded zoysia collars. I’ve been patiently waiting to post a blog regarding this delicate situation. Let’s start on a positive note and keep it simple. I know how to grow turf, we know how to grow turf as a team, we have proved we know how to grow turf over the last three years of my tenure. So......... what’s the problem?!?!

Alright, not simple anymore. This answer is complicated and ever evolving. I really don’t feel like writing a novel(which I could) so I’m going to try to keep it short but there is a lot to cover.

General factors; the collars are a high traffic area. There is no coincidence that most poor areas are located near a green side bunker, front of green or walk-on area. Picture all the foot traffic. Picture all of the maintenance equipment used on greens that are restricted to a thin runway(collar) to turn around or transport near a green side bunker. We do our best to manage traffic but a one way bridge gets twice the traffic, simple logic.

Turf factors; they are zoysia collars. Zoysia really only thrives for about 4 months of the year. Our golf season is almost 10 months a year lately. This means for 6 months of the year this surface is being used and abused while running on one leg.

Local factors; this course had Bermuda grass fairways in the past. There is still Bermuda everywhere just lurking, looking to climb up through our desired turf. From my knowledge, this is why zoysia was layed around the greens. It is very difficult to keep Bermuda from overtaking bentgrass collars so zoysia was the answer... so we thought. Zoysia does have competitive growth against Bermuda. There are chemical products which we use that allows us to suppress Bermuda. This generally gives our zoysia a competitive growth advantage over Bermuda but at the cost of still injuring the zoysia temporarily. So even when the weather is right for zoysia to thrive we are injuring it at the same time to keep Bermuda out.

Soil factors; alright, my biggest concern other than the weather(next). The zoysia collars are sitting on 6-8 inches of sand which is the same profile as our greens. Zoysia is a shallow rooting turf and all zoysia sod is grown on soil. The zoysia doesn’t like the layering effect between soil and sand and results in poor rooting. Poor rooting makes nutrient and water uptake more difficult. Sand root zones dry out quicker and leaches nutrients much quicker than our native dense Missouri soil.

Weather factors; aside from my original blanket statement regarding zoysia growth, this past 9 months of weather was a doozy. A cool end of the summer shortended the thriving growing season, a drought in the fall stressed out the turf going into dormancy, an extreme winter with bitter cold, wind and absence of snow cover and finally a cold spring lengthened the dormancy period. This proved to be a killer all over the Midwest, not just isolated to our golf course.

There are some other factors like slopes facing the afternoon heat, morning shade and other challenges, but I’ve already been typing for 20 minutes longer than I’ve wanted to so we will end it there, haha.

Not a black and white issue, but an issue with multiple shades of gray. The good news is most of the sod we have layed since my arrival has survived. Most thin areas from this spring are thickening up. We have a plan and we have already initiated additional inputs to help minimize issues. As we do these practices we will keep you updated on the process. Currently we have applied more organic fertilizers to help build the soil profile.

Last month we actually removed 6 inches of sand from areas on hole #10 and #13 and replaced with soil and compacted before installing sod. These areas are guaranteed to do well although the process was very timely and labor intensive.