Certainly some of you have noticed that the area between the final pair of fairway bunkers as Eighteen fairway meets the approach is a collection of three or four different varieties of turfgrass. As the temperature has changed, each of these varieties has responded according to it's own natural programming, which has made the differences much more prominent than they were at the height of the season. These variations have also helped bring to light the fact that these separate varieties are not coincidental transplanting; they were laid as sod in prior years. The picture below shows clearly the almost perfect right-angles that mark the edges of sod.
It is because of this that our typical approach of weakening invasive species and allowing our bentgrass to out compete them will not be affective here. Our only option is to strip the entire area and sod it with the proper turf. This means a small amount of extra work, but it is unavoidable if we want to make this area right.
See you on the course!
Elliott Dowling
