Bretton Woods is a very large property, with many acres of
modestly maintained turf. The golf course itself is also a large layout.
Similarly, there are many acres of less important grass across the course that
we don’t have the labor, money, or truthfully, the need, to maintain at a high
level. So, how do we determine what resources, if any, go where?
Golf is meant to be played in as straight of a line as
possible from the tee to the green and into the cup. Everyone who plays the
game is striving for this, even though we all know it doesn’t always work out
as planned. We base our maintenance program, in part, around this same
principle.
If a line is drawn from the center of a tee, to the center
of a fairway, to the center of a green, then we could call this the “perfect
line.” It is the perfect way to play the hole and it is the line where we want
the perfect turf. There is an old saying: “Drive for show and putt for dough.”
Basically, money is made on the greens; if you putt well you will shoot good
scores. The hole is played from tee to green, but our program focuses the
greatest amount of resources on the greens- that is where the money is made. If
the greens are first on the list, then fairways are second, and tees are a
close third. Fairways are slightly more important than the tees because the turf
grass on the fairways has a greater impact on playability. Aside from par 3’s,
a tee is used when teeing off, so the turf plays a smaller role.
Very few shots follow this perfect line, yet we don’t want a
ball that is off of the line by 10 feet to be in sub-par grass. So, we extend
outward from the perfect line, our manicured turf. The entire green is of
utmost importance. The entire fairway is of utmost importance, as is the tee.
From this point we draw a theoretical circle around the hole, encompassing the
green surround, on average about 20 yards of rough on each side of the fairway,
and the tee surround. This is the bubble in which we allocate our time and
effort. Some of what we include in our maintenance area is non-play areas but
that have high aesthetic value. For example, the tee surrounds may not have a
shot played from there for weeks, if ever, but we manage these areas intensely
because they have a very high visual profile. Likewise, as mentioned, the turf
on a tee box is not as important to playability as the fairway grass, yet the
tees are still a high priority also because of aesthetics. No one wants to play
from a tee box without grass, even if the grass isn’t that important to their
shot. Some of the areas we exclude are
so far out of the way that it would be rare for even the worst shot to find its
way there. Some areas get the occasional errant ball, but are still outside of
our focus area. We do mow almost the entire course so poor shots will still be
playable, just not from the same caliber of grass as nearer to center.
A simple diagram gives a visual of the idea of the perfect
line and our surrounding maintenance area. The black circle in the top left is
the green, the thinner, wavy line extending down to the right would be the
fairway edge, and the squares in the bottom right are the tees. The dark line
from tee to fairway to green would be the “perfect line.” The red loop around
the perimeter signifies where we concentrate. As seen in the second diagram,
sometimes the maintenance loop incorporates more than one hole all together,
because of each holes’ proximity to one another. In some cases, it does not
make sense to leave a very small gap of less maintained turf between two
separate holes. For example, at Bretton Woods, when you leave 4 green and walk
to 5 tee, there is an area which could be excluded from maintenance of 4 green
surround and excluded from maintenance of 5 tee surround. However, if we left
this strip under-maintained, when walking to 5 tee, there would be an interval
of grass that was not maintained as well. In general, even though each hole
does not butt right up to the next, we maintain the corridor leading to the
subsequent hole. The final drawing shows a broad overview of our “maintenance
map,” the areas to which we give more attention. Using the map from a
scorecard, everything inside the red is a notch above what is
marked in gray.
Etiquette Reminder of the Month
Please don’t stand in one place for an extended period of
time to practice putting. Your footprints can be worn into the green.
See you on the course!
Joe
jvillegas@bwrc.org
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