Rolling Riviera’s Fairways!? A Simple Explanation

If you’ve watched the opening two rounds of Northern Trust Open play, it’s been apparent that the course is firmer and faster than ever. For Kikuyu fairways, it’s a rarity to ever even contemplate any kind of run to the fairways unless the ground is frozen. As for an explanation, suffering through drought says a lot and so does all of the incredible soil moisture reading work undertaken by superintendent Matt Morton’s crew.

However, a few of you wrote with alarm at my previous mention that the fairways are rolled to increase firmness. The image of rollers on greens is often met with skepticism and I certainly had the same reaction when I first saw the large rollers on Tuesday. But Riviera superintendent Matt Morton has a simple explanation.

“We’ve made a conscious effort to try to speed up the course through equipment,” he said.

In other words, reduce the use of growth regulators and other chemical tricks to tighten the turf and firm up the course. Morton wants to best accentuate Riviera’s many subtle design features, many of which are muted by spongy Kikuuyu. It also helps that Morton has grown to love links golf, is reading Alister MacKenzie’s Spirit Of St. Andrews, and wants to use more sustainable tools to make Riviera play faster and firmer than ever. It’s working.

There have been some 350-yard bombs from the leaderboard dominated by long hitters, including a few with a good bit of roll that is unusual for Riviera. The field average of 283.1 through (almost) two rounds is right on the tour average but high for a kikuyu course. Still, the precision necessary on a firmer course has made the golf fascinating to watch and should weed out the less-precise by Sunday (22 are within 6 strokes of the lead when play was halted because of darkness Friday). The fairway turf has also never looked more pure, which the tour rules staff chalks up to the rollers.

Morton first saw the fairway rolling effects at Merion last year and Riviera has since purchased two Tranz-former rolling units that look like fairway mowers. The Tranz-formers were put into play just a week before the tournament, but have been in use twice a day during competition. The long-term impact has not yet been determined, but Morton hopes to reduce mowings and in general, continue to shift Riviera toward the more sustainable Australian model of maintenance emphasizing grass management that involves less consumption of precious resources.

And rolling lightly nourished turf instead of constantly mowing overfed grass is a good place to start.