THE AT&T BYRON NELSON
TRINITY FOREST GOLF CLUB
DALLAS, TX
May 17-20, 2018
COURSE STATISTICS
Par: 71
Yardage: 7,380
Avg Tee Size: Teeing grounds not defined
Avg Green Size: 13,00 sq ft
Acres of Fairway: 100
Acres of Rough: 0
Sand Bunkers: 88
Water Hazards: 0
Tournament Stimpmeter: 10.5-11 ft
Greens Moisture Content: +/-20%
TURFGRASS AND HEIGHTS OF CUT
Tees: Trinity Zoysia @ 0.350”
Fairways: Trinity Zoysia @ 0.350”
Greens: Champion Bermuda @ 0.100”
Native: Texas Blackland Prairie (includes 30+ species of native turfs, gets mowed once per year)
Blackland Prairie in the foreground is the most endangered ecosystem in North America with less than 1% of total area remaining. (Photo Courtesy trinityforestgc.com)
Every April, the golfing world awakens from a long winter’s slumber and gets ready for the Masters Tournament held at famed Augusta National. Images of lush green grass, flowers blooming, warm sun and blue skies are met with the excitement of finally going outside and shoving that first tee in the ground. But what does our excitement and familiarity with Augusta National do to our own expectations when we finally get out to the golf course for opening weekend?
It’s called Masters Syndrome, many of you suffer from its symptoms, and it is absolutely detrimental to the sustained health of many golf courses and superintendents across the country. The Monday following The Masters is a dangerous day for golf course superintendents. Unexpected visits to the maintenance barn occur, email inboxes fill up, unsolicited text messages are received; each interaction with an all-too-familiar tone. Blown away by the agronomic theater that is Augusta National, club members, greens committees, even general managers and club professionals seek out the golf course superintendent to ask those seven little words- “How do we get those conditions here?”
Finally, the solution has arrived: enter Trinity Forest Golf Club. The antidote for Masters Syndrome. A living case study on what golf course maintenance can and should be: simplified, natural, and designed to achieve agronomic success within its own environment. Don’t get me wrong, the golfing world needs The Masters and Augusta National, it’s my favorite week of the year, but it has it’s own place and it should not be replicated elsewhere. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment, and setting your superintendent up for failure with Augusta-esque conditioning aspirations. The question we should be asking of our superintendents is this; “How do we get the best conditions on our golf course while staying true to our natural environment and limiting our resource inputs to achieve these conditions?”
Golf’s new aesthetic: Native and Natural
I had the exciting opportunity to briefly connect with Kasey Kauff, the Director of Grounds at Trinity Forest Golf Club, and I believe golfers and industry professionals alike should try to learn from his approach and philosophy to simplified golf course maintenance. Golf course maintenance and agronomic science is obviously site-specific and by no means is the Trinity Forest method a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s Kauff’s approach to managing his golf course, crew, and membership that creates the culture behind the golf experience, thus influencing golfers expectations and setting himself and his crew up to be successful under all environmental conditions.
All of the short grass (except for greens) at TFGC is Trinity Zoysia, and it is all mowed at the same height of cut throughout the golf course. We’ll get into the zoysia and its unique properties later, but for now I want to focus on what having a single height of cut (except for greens) means for personnel and resource management. Chances are, your home club sends out a crew of 10-20 people every morning before the first golfers hit the tee box. On any given day, their responsibilities might include mow/roll greens, rake bunkers, change cups/tee markers, mow tees, mow fairways, mow rough, fill divots, and monitor irrigation all while trying to focus on the small details that regularly go forgotten like edging tee boxes and bunker faces. Give your superintendents a pat on the back because meeting the demanding expectations for superb conditions every day is next to impossible with an ever-shrinking operating budget. Let’s walk through those tasks again, this time at Trinity Forest: mow/roll greens, change cups and tees, rake bunkers, fill divots, monitor irrigation, then mow the rest of your golf course with the same machine at the same height throughout two times per week and spend the rest of your time dialing in the details that no one else has the time or staff to focus on. No tee mowers, no rough mowers, just fairway mowers from tee to green. This doesn’t mean that Kauff and his crew don’t work as hard, they certainly do. Their efforts are just focused differently than a traditional club that has four sets of tees, fairways, approaches, intermediate rough, primary rough, and three or more types of turf to maintain.
Your home club might have a fertilizer storage container that looks something like this: greens fertilizers, fairway fertilizers, tee box fertilizers, rough fertilizers, granulars, solubles, pre-emergents, post-emergents, growth regulators, and different fertility products for every season of the year. I’ve worked for clubs that have a 52-week spray calendar with at least one application sprayed every week of the year. I’d guess this is standard protocol for most clubs across the country, not to mention spray applications can cost up to $10,000 per application depending on what product is being sprayed and in which area of the golf course. I’m not even sure if Kauff has a fertilizer storage area at Trinity Forest, probably just a secure closet to store his Round-Up. One of my go-to interview questions is this, “What is the most recent product you sprayed on the golf course, and what will be the last product applied before the tournament arrives?” Kauff’s response was eye opening to me; “Nothing, and we won’t be making any applications before the tournament arrives”. The typical response would be a list of growth regulators and green-up products. Much of this has to do with the turf type at TFGC, and Trinity Zoysia will not work everywhere. However, researching and selecting the right turf type for your environmental conditions fits in with every budget, it doesn’t matter where you are.
Kasey Kauff and Trinity Forest Golf Club are the proud recipients of the 2018 Golf Digest Green Star Environmental Golf Course Award. I asked Kauff what receiving the award means to him and what changes he made in his agronomic approach to win. His response, “I was honored that we got the award. We take a lot of pride in being low inputs. We also take a lot of pride in our native. We hate seeing noxious weeds growing in it, so we dig them out. It’s an overall labor of love out here. We have issues that other courses don’t have, but we aren’t spreading mulch or pinestraw, or edging cart paths. We didn’t make any changes to our routine, it’s what we do”. Kauff and his crew literally didn’t change a thing to win this award, this isn’t a rustic golf course built on family-owned farmland. Trinity Forest is an exclusive private club that was built and sandcapped on a South Dallas landfill in a questionable neighborhood (a neighborhood that the club is slowly bringing back to life through a rejuvenated local job market, 85% of Kauff’s crew comes from the immediate vicinity).
A major role in winning the award is related to Kauff’s irrigation philosophy, a philosophy that he began implementing back in Florida before taking the job at TFGC. Most golf courses are irrigated to achieve a specific moisture content percentage, a number that varies with environmental conditions and management practices, but a number that superintendents spend a lot of their time chasing. Moisture percentages do provide valuable insight as to how well their soils are draining, how shots into greens will be received, and how to manage daily irrigation, but again this concept is simplified at Trinity Forest. Kauff doesn’t spend his time searching for a number on a soil moisture meter; he irrigates to replace ET, or evapotranspiration. ET is a measure of water lost into the atmosphere through the processes of evaporation and transpiration. CLICK HERE to find out how to calculate ET on your own. To put it simply, a hot and windy day will have a higher ET rate than a cool and damp day. Kauff doesn’t set his irrigation system to replenish 100% of water lost through ET, but a much lower number to establish a healthy stand of turf that will always play firm and fast. Following this system, Kauff mentioned that one summer in Florida he didn’t run any water on his golf course from May until September, except for greens and to water-in product applications. This is a great methodology to follow to become a water saver and promote environmental stewardship at your home club. Most clubs water with ET in mind, but it’s likely to chase that moisture content number and not to simply replenish the water that is lost naturally. I will add that the PGA Tour provides a desired moisture content percentage they wish to achieve at each golf course. If you’re on site this week you will certainly see the agronomy staff probing the greens with moisture meters. This week, they are looking to hold 20% moisture content in the greens surfaces.
Back to the golf course itself and away from my agronomic efficiency-focused preach. TFGC boasts 100 acres of fairways on their property. Compare that to the 26 acres of fairway last week at TPC Sawgrass and the average golf course that has between 25-35 acres of maintained fairway turf. As you watch the tournament, you will notice the fairways run from the tees through and around the greens, and directly through to the next tees. A golf course with 30 acres of fairway can send out 3 fairway mowers in the morning and get off the golf course before the first group catches them. At TFGC, they have to send out 7 fairway units to mow their 100 acres of short grass before the lead group catches them. As previously mentioned, all short grass is mowed at the same height of cut throughout the course offering this great flowing aesthetic, it’s an almost disorienting lack of definition but simplistically natural feeling. They don’t have defined tee boxes on the property, just flat areas where tee markers are place. If they didn’t put out tee markers, you’d just find a nice patch of turf and put your tee in the ground wherever you want. The average green size at TFGC is 14,500 sq ft, compared to the PGA Tour average of around 6,000+ sq ft. Holes 3 and 11 share a double green that is a massive 36,000 sq ft. It was probably a tough task for Kauff and the Tour Agronomists to determine the 4 best tournament pin locations on each green with all that space and variety.
36,000 sq ft double green - Holes 3 & 11 (Photo Courtesy @KaseyKauff 5/7/18)
Formerly know as L1F Zoysia, Trinity Zoysia is named after its tee-to-green installation at the site of this week’s tournament. Trinity Forest is the first golf club in the world to grass their fairways with L1F wall-to-wall. Trinity Zoysia is a high-density drought tolerant/low fertility turfgrass that offers the highest levels of playability. It is an extremely fine textured turf with an upright growth habit that is best maintained at a half-inch height of cut or lower. It also possesses a high level of wear and tear tolerance, paired with it’s environmentally sustainable characteristics makes it an ideal playing surface for golf courses. Because of its drought tolerance and low fertility characteristics, Trinity Zoysia is able to continuously provide a firm and fast playing surface year-round. CLICK HERE to see a video of the TFGC maintenance crew bouncing golf balls off the fairway to shoulder height. When fairways are this firm- good shots get better and bad shots require a provisional.
What should we expect to see this week? For starters, the PGA Tour asked Kauff to slow down his golf course for the event by raising their height of cut. Your home club likely mows their fairways around 0.500” during peak golf season, TFGC will be raising their fairway height to 0.350” to host the Byron Nelson. I’ve worked events where the course is essentially unplayable following the tournament because of the aggressive management practices the Tour requires for their tournament conditions. This will not be the case at TFGC this week, after the Tour leaves the crew will go back to their 0.300” or lower fairways and they’ll be able to speed up the golf course to provide their members with the conditions they are used to. It’s crazy to think that the best players in the world will be playing a course that is slowed down compared to the golf course the members typically play on a daily basis.
Dallas has experienced a difficult spring season for optimal growing conditions this year. At the time of the tournament, the bermuda greens will be about three weeks out of dormancy due to unseasonably cold temperatures throughout the Dallas area. Kauff says he typically experiences his last frost of the year in early-mid March. This year, Kauff saw his last frost on April 15th, which contributed to a slower transition out of dormancy on his greens. The current weather forecast is showing temperatures approaching triple digits for the weekend rounds, so we might get a front row seat to watch the conditions get firmer as the days go on, especially if the wind picks up. Despite its name, there are no trees on the golf course to slow down the wind if it starts to blow, which is why we see a tournament Stimpmeter of 10.5-11 feet. The golf course is completely exposed to the elements and the greens speeds are set to protect the field if the weather gets extreme. No one wants to shut down play because you can’t set a ball at rest on the greens.
The golf course itself has been the recipient of varying reviews from Tour players of late, but that’s not the reason we should be tuning into the coverage this weekemd. We should be tuning in to admire the playing conditions that are possible when decision-makers put value in researching the best options for their existing environment by selecting turfgrasses that promote the highest levels of playability without requiring advanced inputs and biological manipulation to sustain turf health.
With some cooperation from Mother Nature this week, superintendents will hopefully have unexpected visits to their offices from members who appear to be suffering from the terminal symptoms of Trinity Syndrome. That would be a monumental shift.
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