The first picture is one of the bermudagrass fairways this past spring. With the help of the USGA, we began to clean them up and promote bermudagrass as the primary fairway turf. We aggressively sprayed all the fairways except part of 5,8,9,11,17 and 18 with Revolver herbicide. The Revolver selectively removes ALL cool season grasses and weeds, promoting the bermudagrass. We lowered the mowing height and very aggressively fertilized three times a month. The end result was an overwhelming success. Where do we go from here now that the bermudagrass is pretty much dormant? Picture 2 is of the 18th fairway that was NOT sprayed. We also sprayed the herbicide Barricade on all the fairways on Newport around the end of August. The Barricade is applied to prohibit the germination of poa annua and other winter annual weeds. Our goal is to reduce the poa populations by 75%. Anywhere a divot is taken (picture 3) poa annua can germinate...much the same as crabgrass germinating in divots in the summertime.
The areas of perennial ryegrass that is actively growing now, are not areas we sprayed. I purposely stayed far away from approaches and fairway edges, so we could properly evaluate how much bermudagrass we actually had. Going forward, the next step we will take is in February, we will spray RoundUp on the fairways. Yes RoundUp! It does not harm the bermudagrass when it is dormant, when sprayed at a rate of 22-32 oz/acre. The RoundUp will clean up all the perennial ryegrass, poa annua and other weeds. This will allow the fairways to play better, look better and become even better in 2012. At this time, I do not anticipate spraying the right of 5, far left of 8, any of 11 or 17. We will take a calculated approach to converting those fairways to all bermudagrass. This includes tree removal and patching sod into these areas.
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