Lose Any Good Turf Lately? by Jim Black From the outside looking in, some may see the Superintendent as a miracle worker. A person who can maintain turfgrass under the most brutal conditions. Someone who has a wealth of knowledge combined with a big bag of pixie dust. Superintendents are seen as individuals in a highly specialized field who have secret underground contacts for super-seed and high-falutin fertilizer, which when combined will grow grass that is off the charts of Harry Homeowner-dom. That may be all well and good. We do a fantastic job under some pretty strenuous conditions, there’s no doubt. But sometimes, believe it or not, we metamorphosize into humans and actually lose turf! I know, I know. It’s hard to believe and I hope you’re sitting down as you read this. Losing turf to us is like a doctor losing a patient, like Timmy losing Lassie, like Tom and Dick losing Harry. The loss of turfgrass through error or environment can be devastating - a looming black mark on our psyche as professionals. Sure, I’ll admit it. I’ve lost turf. I’ll never forget my worst experience of turf loss - even if I become a shoe salesman, I’ll never forget the root rot pythium that took the 11th green and half of the 12th. It was a particularly steamy and hot mid-Atlantic summer with lots of hose-dragging and handwatering going on. One ‘off-the-grid’ employee who had landed a new job was out handwatering on the afternoon of his last day. I can still vividly recall cresting the hill about 250 yards off the tee and looking down across the expanse of the par 5 fairway to the 11th green. Lo and behold, my two other handwatering guys are standing there, amused witnesses to my short-timer doing his own personal rain dance - the 1-inch hose pointed straight up in the air, he dancing in circles in the lake he had created in the

middle of the green. Ugly. (He actually had the nerve the following summer to come back to see if I could use him again!) Everyone present was sent to the shop (except the short-timer, who was sent to his car) to get the roller squeegees in an effort to hopefully dodge a bullet and avoid disaster. I got my hands on some much-needed chemicals a couple days later, but it was too late. And I was fresh out of pixie dust. I LEARNED A VERY IMPORTANT LESSON HERE: Never be caught without much-needed chemicals! Shortly after the rain dance incident came the melting out of the turf and the putrid stench of the hot, saturated soil. The decline of course started out in the ‘bowl’ of the poorly constructed push-up green, and gradually crept uphill from there, spores either being unknowingly carried on equipment, or simply wicking up from the fetid stew in the bottom of the bowl. After shipping out a soil sample to the University of Maryland, I found out the hard way that once you see the effects of root rot pythium on the surface, it’s too late. You can bend over and kiss your grass goodbye. Of course the triplex greens mower shared as many disease spores as possible with the 12th green. It was a pitiful and painful way to find out if your operator could mow a straight line and believe me, linear turf loss is not a pretty sight. Luckily, the owners of the club took pity on me and allowed me to keep my job, but humiliation comes in many forms as I soon found out. First, the obvious questions that come with the old hairy eyeball and feigned sympathetic tonal quality. You hear the question, but you know what they’re really insinuating. For example, “Gee, Jim, what happened down there on the 11th?” actually comes across as, “Gee, Jim, when did you turn into such a crappy groundskeeper who has no friggin clue what’s going on?” Smart questions are then followed by dumb ones asked by people who insist on playing up to the suffering green. They can’t bring themselves to play to the temporary because it’s a par 5 and ego can’t resist hitting on to the real green in two.

True story; as this person 3-putted to an old cup plug, rolling his eyes to the fact it wasn’t a smooth putt, he walked off the green towards me through the re-seeded area and asked, “Do you think it will come back?” “It will if you don’t,” was my unspoken reply. But there was the humiliation again. I mean, it was a dumb question yes, but if you’ve never been in this situation before let me tell you – it is very humiliating to be asked if you’re capable of re-growing grass when you are a Golf Course Superintendent going through the pain of major turf loss. Eventually of course, new grass did grow in and the putts rolled true again. If you’ve never suffered major turf loss before just remember, keeping grass alive is not a black and white venture like, say, mathematics. This fine agricultural process we’re in is dependant on both human input as well as the variables of the environment. If you do experience a major turf loss event, keep your composure, work hard through the humility, and have faith that the grass will grow again.