Log in
  
Home > Business > Turfgrass Management
Related topics: Turfgrass Management,Golfdom content, Plant Nutrition, Soil

Turfgrass Management

Weird Science

June 1, 2008 By: Anthony Pioppi Golfdom

Some superintendents swear by Marc Logan's agronomic method to rid greens and fairways of


For years, salesmen and companies have promoted products and methods they say result in that magic combination of improving turf quality while saving money. Rarely has the reality matched the hype.



But on layouts in California, Oregon and Montana, established golf course superintendents say that Greenway Golf Vice President Marc Logan has come up with such a panacea. They say his method of ridding greens and fairways of Poa annua and moss while encouraging the growth of desirable grasses not only improves conditions but also reduces maintenance budgets.

Not everyone buys into the program, however. Many, including academic types and superintendents, have continued doubts.

Logan's plan is simple: Increase the acidity of the soil through iron applications while reducing fertilizers, especially nitrogen. When nutrients are required, elemental fertilizers should be used. He also calls for lessening disturbance through the reduction of hollow-core aeration. He wants greens mown as low as possible in an effort to reduce organic buildup.

"Bentgrass requires an acid environment," Logan says. "So I asked myself: How could you put that in place and a have a playing surface people expect day in and day out."

Logan, 47, is a native of Australia where he earned a turf degree and became a head superintendent. It was during that time that Logan said he was struck by how many links and seaside courses around the world had turf dominated by bentgrass and fescues with Poa annua making up a small percentage of the grasses. Logan said he looked into the reason and uncovered research compiled over decades from places such as the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States that said soil high in acidity favors bentgrass while providing unsatisfactory growing conditions for Poa annua.

Jesse Gooding, superintendent at the municipally owned 36-hole Heron Lakes Golf Course in Portland, Ore., subscribes to Logan's theory and has proof that it works.

"You just have to ask the golfers, that's my proof," Gooding says, adding that at the same time the players were raving about his course's condition, he was cutting his pesticide budget by as much as $20,000 a year.

Down the coast at the 36-hole Monterey (Calif.) Country Club, where superintendent Bob Zoller has been running the show for more than 30 years, he has cut back significantly on his fertilizer applications. Where once he applied as much as 1 pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet a month on greens and fairways, he has reduced that to 3 or 4 pounds a year on his greens and as little as 2 pounds a year on the bentgrass/fescue fairways of his Dunes Course, a Rees Jones renovation of a Seth Raynor design. At the same time, greens that were once nearly 100 percent Poa are now as much as 80 percent bentgrass. Fairways have seen similar transitions. The results are much the same on the Shore Course.

It was during his tenure as head greenkeeper at Mount Lawley Golf Club in western Australia, which opened in 1929 and is about 10 miles from the ocean, that Logan first implemented his theories transitioning the greens from Poa to bentgrass. More than 20 years later he says the course is still following his advice.

After implementing his program on a few more courses in Australia, Logan moved to the United States in early 2000 and brought his ideas with him. While growing in the Jack Nicklaus-designed Mayacama Golf Club located in California's Sonoma Valley, Logan met George Kelley, a former PGA Tour player who had become the owner and developer of Stevinson Ranch Golf Club, an 18-hole public course he designed with Bruce Harbottle III, also in central California. Kelley was impressed with Logan's ideas and the two formed Greenway Golf in 2002 as a golf course consulting company that morphed into a management company in 2006. Stevinson, Calif.-based Greenway Golf manages all facets at three facilities and the maintenance programs at five others. 

1 2 3

Add Comment








Questex