Trees -VS- Turf, who's the winner?

Trees are an integral part of most golf courses in the Pacific Northwest. When managed properly, they can co-exist with turf most of the time. The taller the turf, the better it gets along with trees. Tees and greens are the areas that don't like competition from trees for light and water. Short cut turf = short roots and the trees win the battle every time. The photos below were taken last week and show the left side of #12 green. Several members have asked me lately why the green has shrunk in size in that area. Over the past winter, the edge of the green was moved in (four feet at the mid point) because of stress caused by the big tree in front, and the other big one just off the left side of the green. This area becomes thin and turns to mud if we continue to mow it through the winter. It's full of tree roots competing with the turf for food and water, and the turf checks out for winter due to the lack of sunlight caused by the trees. Fungal diseases (especially cool season Pythium) are a problem from October through March due to the shade, so extra fungicide applications are made to this green.

Sixteen months ago the turf on the 15th green started showing severe signs of stress. We had done our fall aeration in early September and the green was not looking good (Fall aeration causes a lot of stress on weak shaded greens.) We babied it along for the next month, and in mid-October sprayed all the greens with a fungicide as part of our normal disease prevention program. The turf did not like the added stress from the fungicide application and took a turn for the worse. We re-sodded sections of the green, but the rest was getting worse. It got a case of cool season Pythium and that was all it took to push it over the edge. Here is a photo below of what it looked like on November 6, 2012. 

I was so disgusted by the condition of the turf that I decided we needed to replace the entire green. You can see my cart tracks where burned some rubber on the dead grass. That was my final goodbye to the past two months of stress I dealt with  over the condition of this green. 

Back to the shop for the sod cutter, and time to get to work.

The entire green was cut, cleared, and hauled off  to our compost pile. The sod we had been growing at the nursery on the 3rd hole was in perfect condition. It was built with greens aeration cores that I got from Seattle Golf Club the year before. We laid the new green in two days and it looked great. It was opened for play in three weeks and still looks good today. The only issue we still have with this green is the stress that caused the initial problems is still present. I can't guarantee that sometime in the future we have another turf failure. The photo below was take at 12:30 pm on November 7th, 2012. This green has shade over 1/3rd of the green at the time of day when the sun is at it highest point. At 2:00 pm it was completely covered in shade. This fall we plan to have Arborcom do shade analysis on both #12 and #15 greens. We'll take their recommendations and remove trees that are necessary to get the light needed to grow healthy turf. This time next year we should have more light on the greens and be confident that they will perform like the rest of the greens on the course.