Report from Dr. John Kaminiski, Penn State University

 

March 22, 2016

Brian Stiehler

Golf Course Superintendent

Highlands Country Club

981 Dillard Road

Highlands, NC 28741

 

Dear Mr. Stiehler:

 

 

This report summarizes my findings during my visit to Highlands Country Club on March 7 and 8, 2016. I would like to start out by saying that it was a pleasure meeting with you and your staff to talk about your agronomic plan as well as some possible upgrades to your maintenance blog. It was clear to me that your dedication to continuously improving the golf course and the facilities for the members is a high priority. This was seen both in your diligence in your proactive agronomic plan, but also in your desire to constantly communicate information about the course with you members via your blog. Below, I will highlight some of my thoughts on some of the important agronomic programs you’re carrying out.

Putting Greens, Approaches and Fairways
Like most golf courses with similar climatic conditions, it is a struggle to maintain a monostand of the ‘Penn A4’ creeping bentgrass. I am impressed, however, at your program that is helping to keep the annual bluegrass encroachment to a minimum. I think continuing these programs of aerification, sand topdressing (the more the better), dryjecting and others will help keep your annual bluegrass populations as low as possible. This is critical should you consider utilizing methiozolin (PoaCure) when it comes to market. As you know, PoaCure is an exciting new herbicide that is capable of selectively removing annual bluegrass from bentgrass greens. Ultimately, it will be more successful when starting with lower populations of annual bluegrass which is why continuing to be proactive in minimizing your populations is an excellent plan. I would continue to be aggressive at reducing your thatch and organic matter through removal as well as dilution via topdressing. In addition to the practices being implemented on your putting greens, I am impressed with your focus and attention to the condition to your approaches. These areas are often overlooked and get lost somewhere between the high maintenance of your putting greens and the lower inputs of the fairways. Adding the wicking drainage in your approaches to help dry them out is an excellent start to improving the playability. I would continue to implement practices that will remove excess water and help to firm up the surfaces. The dethatching you have implemented in conjunction with the addition of sand will make for a large improvement in the surfaces over time. It is important to point out that these practices, as with the putting greens, are not one time fixes and should continue to be implemented as part of your seasonal maintenance practices. There’s really not much to say about your fairways. Even in March, they were in excellent shape and I would imagine that during the season they continue to perform excellent. The suggestion is to simply keep doing what you are currently doing to maintain these conditions. Monitoring organic matter and thatch will continue to be an important process to implement dethatching and aerifications when needed.

Shade and Air Movement (i.e., Tree Program)

Highlands Country Club has a beautiful stand of trees on the property, but obviously this can come at a detriment to the turfgrass stands. Your selective removal of trees that are negatively impacting the turfgrass is important and should be continued. While it would be ideal to clear cut trees as it relates to plant health, I think this would negatively impact the overall look and feel of the property. For this reason, I think the quality of your tree removal program is worth noting. The removal has been highly selective to deal with those areas of turf that are more severely impacted by the trees and is not overly noticeable. Continued attention to improve light penetration (especially during the AM hours) as well as improve air circulation are important factors in maintaining healthy turf. This will also help to continue to favor the bentgrass over the annual bluegrass on your more heavily shaded putting greens.

Fungicide Programs

As you know, my background is in golf course agronomics with a focus on turf disease management. During my visit, we spent a lot of time talking about your fungicide programs and optimizing your results with a focus on quality of the putting greens, but also being mindful of economics. While your program is a solid one, there are a few suggestions that I provided to help improve your disease control while being mindful of potential resistance issues surrounding dollar spot. Dollar spot is one of the most economically important diseases in climates experienced in your area and resistance management is a key factor to consider. The key modifications that we discussed were rotation of additional chemical classes such as the SDHI fungicides and a reduction of consecutive applications of fungicides within the QoI and DMI class of fungicides.  Additionally, the incorporation of Chipco Signature for plant health during the summer was discussed.  There has been no resistance found with this fungicide and repeating applications every two weeks throughout the growing season will help improve plant health in the summer and also be beneficial for the root Pythium you have experienced in the past.  The use of Dr. Latin’s Turfmetrics Program to assist in the development of your seasonal fungicide program will serve as an excellent selection guide and also allow you to track the number and quantity of each active ingredient being applied. As more and more pre-mixed fungicides become available, the rotation of chemistries becomes more difficult to assess. This program will be a valuable resource.

Communication via the Blog

In addition to my background with agronomics, I have been heavily involved with social media, website design and blog implementation for the past 8 years. While it has been more of a hobby for me than anything, I have been seen as an industry leader in this area for a number of years. Based on my experience in this area, I applaud you for your efforts in continuously updating your membership via your online blog. In my opinion, many superintendents have sound agronomic plans, but lack in their ability to communicate with their membership. I am happy to see that you are excelling in this area and also mentoring your assistant to be an excellent communicator as well. I think that the use of your blog to share the progress of the various projects happening at Highlands Country Club has been excellent. One of the downfalls that I routinely observe from similar blogs is the lack of content over time. In reviewing your posts, they have been consistent and informative. You should be commended for this as this is the number one reason these blogs fail. Although I do not think that this is necessary in terms of sharing your message, I have some suggestions that can help to improve your blog. One area that we spoke about was the inclusion of an email signup form where members can “opt in” to receiving email notifications automatically when a new post is added. This can be an effectively tool as it will not send too many email notifications, but will send out an email automatically after each new post. This means that those interested do not have to keep checking the website to find out if a new post has been added. It’s a small detail, but adds to the convenience and also the readership. There are many options out there to accomplish this, but for your current blog I recommend www.feedburner.com. Additional options that can enhance your blog could include switching to a more visual content management platform outside of “blogger.” While there are many available, I generally recommend paying a small fee to self-host a WordPress website (www.wordpress.org). These can be setup relatively quickly via companies like www.godaddy.com or others. Customized templates are also available for a nominal one-time fee that can enhance the overall look and feel of your blog. Again, this is not necessary to continue to share your message as you are doing now, but there is some additional benefits including:

• Ease of categorization of your posts so they can be easily found in the future

• Creating a more website-like presence as opposed to a blog

• The ability to better understand which posts are more interesting to your members via Google

Analytics

• Incorporation/Integration of other sites like Facebook or Twitter should you decide to expand to

those.

• The ability to import your current blogs into a new site should you go this route.
 

To conclude, I was very impressed with your ability to manage the agronomics at Highlands Country Club in conjunction with the communication to the membership. Although not previously pointed out, I observed the high level of organization and time management that you exhibited during our two day visit. I am 100% confident that your organizational skills are the primary reason you are able to balance all of these activities effectively and efficiently. Although I didn’t have a chance to interact with your membership during this visit, I am confident that they are extremely happy to have you as their golf course superintendent. I look forward to seeing the continued progress of the golf course as well as your website moving forward. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions or need any further clarification on my suggestions for your agronomic plans or the expansion of your website.

Sincerely,

John Kaminski