Snow in the Northeast, Dormant turf in Dallas

This week, I had the opportunity to visit a couple of golf courses in the Dallas region. While I was touring these courses, the entire Northeast was getting pummeled by one of the largest snow storms of the century (thank goodness for the #snOMG posts on twitter, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to keep up with it).

Anyway, since the entire Northeast is currently under anywhere from a few inches to a foot or more of snow, I thought that I would give a special post for those in the Dallas area.  My visits took me to the Dallas National Golf Club and Colonial Country Club.  These 2 courses provided a unique opportunity to see a mix of both warm-season fairways/roughs and cool-season putting greens.  Recent cold temperatures shut down the growth of the bermudagrass (Colonial Country Club) and zoysiagrass (Dallas National) fairways and slowed the growth of the bentgrass putting greens.  The greens were in excellent condition at both clubs and disease issues were few and far between.

During the season, diseases that can often be found on the course include fairy ring, spring dead spot, and large patch.  In fact, there was a few remaining patches of large patch on the zoysia in the practice facility where fungicides are used on a limited basis.  Control of the patch diseases is being managed with fall and spring fungicide applications.  As you can imagine, the major issues at the courses are seen during the heat of the summer when severe stress is put on the bentgrass putting greens.  I hope to get back sometime to see the course in these conditions...a pathologists dream!

Other issues which I don't typically get to deal with included the development of algae in some of the bunkers and the management of warm-season encroachment into the bentgrass putting greens.  I hope to be able to pass along some information from our GCSAA algae grant which is currently in progress.  Although the project's goal is to manage algae on putting green turf, I am interested to see if some of our findings could translate to the bunker sand as well.

The visit with Scott Ebers and Brannon Goodrich was great and I appreciate their hospitality in showing me around the course.  Both courses were in excellent condition and unique.  Colonial with its rich history and long-standing relationship with the PGA and Dallas National with its unique zoysiagrass fairways and spectacular views are must a must see for anyone interested in golf OR interested in growing bentgrass in some of the most difficult environments.  To me, this would be like growing Poa greens in the mid-Atlantic...not an easy task during the intense summer months.

Despite being in Texas, we were impacted by the storm as all flights from Dallas to Philadelphia were canceled on Sunday and here I sit in the airport on Monday writing a new post. I just hope that we make the earlier flight (currently on standby), because if we don't we will not get home until ~11PM. I did post an image above of Dallas National taken from my phone, but I will have to wait until I get home to upload photos from the course.