Inside the USGA’s playbook on golf’s water usage

Regarding water use and turf, the USGA is a near-bottomless reservoir of information. Check out the USGA Water Resource Center if you don’t believe that. The byline states, “It is essential for everyone involved in the game to strive to conserve and protect the world’s most vital resource.”

The website is a great start. But, as recent USGA Green Section hire Mateo Serena, Ph.D., says, “Much of that information is scattered.”

The USGA Green Section’s Matteo Serena, Ph.D., (left) and Brian Whitlark (right) survey a tee with subsurface irrigation on The Club at Las Campanas, Santa Fe, N.M. (Photo: Mike Kenna)

As the senior manager of irrigation research and services, Serena is the point person to translate the vast publications into a summary called “The Playbook.”

The purpose of the USGA’s playbook is to provide readily digestible information about irrigation in one place. The USGA will not dictate a course’s operations but offer practical guidance rooted in the latest science.

Serena and a team of experts will assemble nine “buckets,” or categories, where golf courses can save water. One is cutting back on irrigated turf because, as Serena suggests, “the less grass you have to water, the less water you have to use.”

You also use less water if you water more precisely. That’s another bucket: targeted irrigation, powered by technology like subsurface irrigation, which directs carefully calibrated amounts of water straight into the root zones.

Some golf courses have adopted these subsurface systems on tees and bunker faces. The USGA will explore how to expand subsurface irrigation to fairways with minimal disruptions and at manageable costs. However, using this method on severely sloped layouts won’t be easy.

The USGA once preached an eco-conscious message centered on “brown is the new green.” Serena jests that it was a good idea, but it didn’t fly. Partly, because it put course operators in a corner. Brown grass was a course condition that many of their customers didn’t like. Golfers will need to get serious about how much water golf courses use.

“We’re not talking about color anymore — whether the grass should be yellow or brown or something else,” Serena says. “That’s not where the focus should be. The message now is about playability and performance.”

The game of golf and its relationship with water continues to evolve. “The Playbook” will help us all better explain steps to conserve and protect the world’s most precious resource.

Photo: Mike Kenna, Ph.D.

Mike Kenna, Ph.D., retired director of research, USGA Green Section. Contact him at mpkenna@gmail.com.