Rolling Riviera’s Fairways!? A Simple Explanation

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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.

“We would not have finished today had we not covered the greens with tarps."

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Granted, the Evian situation was unique because the greens were so new but it is cause for concern that the success of tarping the greens overnight could influence this practice more in the future.

Randall Mell on how tarping saved the 54-hole Evian Championship from further misery.

A half-inch of rain fell over Evian Resort Golf Club through late Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Thursday’s first round was washed out by a third of an inch of rain. That came on top of all the rain that saturated the course earlier in the week.

“We weren’t sure, honestly, how it would turn out, and if it would help because we had never done it before,” Daly-Donofrio said. “And the grounds crew had never done it before.”

“Sometimes, she makes me feel like I have a higher purpose than just growing grass."

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Lisa Mickey profiles golf course superintendent's best friends who perform a variety of tasks, from geese management to public relations work in the case of TPC Sawgrass's Bailey to Fieldstone Golf Club's Pink, supervised by Damon Di Giorgio.

From Monday's NY Times:

But Pinki is ready to work when she and Di Giorgio arrive at the course each day about 6 a.m. She runs as many as three miles beside her owner’s cart.

Pinki runs after flocks of geese but carefully avoids the water. She also chases deer and foxes.

Once, while Pinki was chasing deer, Di Giorgio was called to solve a problem and forgot about his dog. He received a call that Pinki was on the eighth hole, so he drove his cart to find her.

“When I got there, there were four men taking turns holding her while they putted out,” he said. “She’s a real icebreaker when it comes to member relations.”

Pinki also visits people in hospice care and patients with Alzheimer’s disease in hospitals in Wilmington, Del.

“Sometimes, she makes me feel like I have a higher purpose than just growing grass,” Di Giorgio said.

Survey: Traveling Golfers Just Want Good Greens

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Max Adler summarizes Golf Digest's customer satisfaction survey coordinated by Dr. Dan Sachau, professor of psychology at Minnesota State University at Mankato, and Dr. Luke Simmering, a consultant within the global organizational effectiveness department for Walmart.

Out of 2,434 respondents, the median profile was a 58-year-old male who plays seven rounds a month and pays $62 per round and you may not be shocked to learn that course conditioning mattered more than anything, while slow play was not a factor.

The contradiction between what people say and do has long served much of that wide field of study called the humanities. In this instance, respondents said pace of play was their top driver of satisfaction, when in actuality it was the least. "It's possible the great majority of people who took the survey happened to have a last round where they felt neither impatient or rushed," Sachau says, "but more likely, this is an aspect that assumes great importance only when others are constant." In other words, pace of play matters a lot at your home course because you already know exactly what to expect in the other areas. When you're a regular, it's more likely the foursome ahead or the kitchen staff comes under your cross hairs than the superintendent.

"Far and away, course conditions proved the most important driver of satisfaction when golfers travel," Sachau says, "much more so than the pace of the round or the cost of the green or guest fee, both of which golfers stated as more important." Specifically, in ascending order golfers value the conditions of the bunkers, the tee boxes, the fairways and, most of all, the greens.