Keeping the course green and dry

During long stretches of dry warm weather as we've had this spring and summer, it's very challenging to keep the course dry and green. It's easy to keep the course green, but a lot of areas would be sloppy wet and the course won't play like it should. Differing soil types adjacent to each other, tree roots, sprinkler head spacing, shade, southern facing slopes, areas of the course without adequate sprinkler head coverage, sand capped  fairways bordering rough with no sand cap, and bunker edges are just some of the factors affecting how much water an area needs to stay green.

This wet spot is just off the left side of #6 fairway. The fairway is green and firm. The only way to get this area to dry out is to turn back the times on the three sprinklers that cover the area. But those three sprinklers also water part of the fairway. The wet spot will dry out and still be green but the fairway will get cooked. We could turn down the run times for the sprinklers but then the fairway would have to get hand watered every morning to keep it green. We adjust the run times on areas like this all over the golf curse every day in an attempt to keep everything as dry and green as possible. Two of the new tools we use to help us achieve dry and green conditions are hand held and in ground moisture meters. We have moisture meters installed in the root zone of three of our greens which show the moisture content of that green in real time. They are tied into our new irrigation control system and the numbers help us decide how much water to apply each night. We also use hand held moisture meters like the one pictured below.

These units are used on greens each day in the morning to determine how much more water is needed to be applied with a hand hose to get a desired moisture content level of 25 to 30%. Ten or twelve areas of each green are checked because of varying conditions on each green. Sometimes only one or two spots on a green need extra water from a hose. We have been able to keep the greens much more consistent from one to the next with use of these meters. We are also to keep them drier overall because we know exactly what each green is at each day.

We have two guys on our crew that do all of the daily watering, Tim Zadina (shown above) and Frank Walker. Tim does the back nine and Frank has the front nine. These guys know each green like the back of their hand and with the use of the moisture meters are able to check the problem areas on each green. Tim is shown above checking the 18th green. It takes him about three minutes to check all the spots on the green to determine which (if any) of those areas need additional water. We set the irrigation run times at night to be just on the low side so we don't over water, then check all the greens in the morning. It takes a lot of man hours but it's what is needed to keep the course as green and dry as possible.