The Breakdown: What's the Thought Process to Watering

I apologize for the long hiatus, but the time that elapsed from the last post til now seemed like a moment of brevity.  The summer has been cruising by, or so it seems such, however for as mild as the year has been the past couple weeks of hot sunny weather is beginning to impose it's will on the turf.  I'm sure many of your home lawns are experiencing a similar set of circumstances, if enough water is not applied than your likely seeing some browning, discoloration, and a much slower growth habit.  It's very natural, but that brings us to that limiting factor, the one vital resource that dictates whether our lawn is green or brown, lush or hardened off, and that of course is water.  We've touched on this topic via a previous post, but today we're trying to provide a different perspective in order to provide a more complete understanding of the nuances that go into properly managing water usage and thus turf health.

The rough on the right side of the 17th fairway, is getting
stressed because the rough is only watered when the
fairways are, and we water lightly to help with playability

  As you drive around the course I'm sure you've noticed that peripheral rough areas are turning brown, and some may even be entering a stage of dormancy until weather conditions are more apt for growth.  This is normal for a course that does not have wall to wall irrigation coverage, not to mention one that does not have their own irrigation supply.  Due to the nature of our irrigation supply (City water feed), we must also be cognizant of water usage to be fiscally responsible when meeting our forecasted budget.  When we set the irrigation system for nightly watering we have a hierarchy of importance, with greens being the most important, followed by fairways, tees, and rough.  With most golfers it doesn't matter if the courses fairways and tees are perfect if the greens are thin, diseased, and overall in poor condition.  Greens are the focal point for every course, which is why they are our initial priority, meaning if we need to run the rough less in a dry spell to give the greens additional water we will do so.

Drain lines drying out on the 10th fairway.  Due in large
part to the sandy nature of the trenches.  If we watered
enough to prevent the drain lines from wilting, the fairway
would likely be a swamp.

Throughout the day we'll monitor greens, tees, and fairways with hand held moisture meters in order to gauge their condition as well as to determine the length of time irrigation needs to be run that night.  When determining the length of time to run irrigation, we also take into account playability.  It would be easy enough to just run everything for extended lengths of time to make sure the turf was wet, but that would not provide the best playing surface.  So we collectively look at the upcoming weather, is it going to be hot, wet etc, then we must take into account is there a tournament, or is it a day where there's little to no play, meanwhile having a pulse on the condition of the greens prior to running irrigation.  In lieu of weekends and tournaments we will error of the side of less water to promote greens that are relatively firm but also receptive, striking a balance that most golfers appreciate.  To assure there's not excessive wilt on any given day, we will also schedule a team of handwaterers to preserve playability as well as the overall health of the turf.

The rough right of one fairway stressed, due to warm dry
weather, coupled with a lot of cart traffic.

In making the decision to water, we must also consider a number of other variables such as the state of the irrigation system.  In a number of areas on the course we still have transite main lines (combination of cement and asbestos), which are very brittle in nature, thus they can only withstand so much pressure without increasing the potential for the main line breaking.  In many cases we are also relegated to city water pressure, so we don't have exceedingly high pressure to run numerous heads at once.  You see, each head requires a certain PSI in order for it to run, if the pressure is insufficient the head will not pop and the following day that area will likely be wilting.  This now runs into another consideration, when running the heads in multiple areas it could take up to 8 or 9 hours to cycle through all the set programs, the issue there is we only have so many hours in between the last group of the day and the first group of the next day.  So we must customize our water schedule to fit within this window, but also strike a balance that will not leave widespread areas with insufficient moisture.  Also, when you run the water for extended periods of time you increase your likelihood for disease, so this is another variable we must consider.

Looking back at the 18th and 9th tees where the rough is
badly stressed, due in large to an irrigation system that
doesn't have full coverage.

It sounds daunting in some regards, but you must work with what you have.  Which is why throughout the summer there is a crew handwatering greens, tees, and fairways to supplement for the inadequacies of the irrigation system.  The importance of water management on greens cannot be understated, too little for too long and you're wilting substantially, too much with extreme weather and you promote disease, succulent turf easily injured by foot traffic, a lack of oxygen in the root zone, and a number of other detrimental side effects.  Perhaps a bit verbose, but we wanted to give you a broad view of what goes into water management during the stressful months of the season (playability, time, priority, money, state or irrigation system, and weather), and that at the end of the day you have to work within the confines of your system to keep things in an acceptable health and playability range.