Highlands CC putting greens are comprised of a mix of Poa annua and Penn A4 Creeping Bentgrass.
Without getting too deep into the meaning of this graph, it essentially shows which Creeping Bentgrass variety “wakes up” faster in the spring compared to others. Penn A4, an excellent variety does have a downside and this is it. It is the second to last variety of bentgrass to start growing in the spring. This means it requires the warmest conditions to resume growth. Specifically, it requires soil temperatures of 65*F or higher. It’s May 6th in Highlands, and our soil temperatures have yet to hit 60*F. Pure Select (another descendant of Penn State Bentgrass) starts growing at the coolest temperature. The next variety, Pure Distinction, is the variety of Bentgrass used on the new greens on holes #12 and #14. What this shows you is that you cannot force grass growth. The turf will resume growth when the conditions are right. In this case, we have another week or two to go before our Penn A4 bentgrass greens are happy.
This also tells us that if we ever switched the turf on our putting surfaces, we may want to choose a variety the resumes growth at cooler soil temperatures, like 55* to 60*F. Again, by looking at this bar graph, you'll see there is only one variety of Bentgrass that is slower to come out of winter than Penn A4. It's also worth noting the while Penn A4 is slow to resume growth, the Poa annua on our greens is loving life without any competition. The Poa annua has a 1.5 month head start on our Bentgrass! Poa annua growth resumes at soil temperatures of 50*-55*F.