Golf Mixtures

Grass for Golf courses can be placed into 3 main sections

1) Golf Green: These areas are generally composed of the finest grasses available, normally fescue and bent.

2) Golf Tees areas prepared with grasses that are as  low maintenance as possible but with exceptional ability to recover from divot scarring. Tee Mixes can be split into 2 main types of mixture, i) Tees that include Dwarf Turf perennial ryegrass and ii) Tees that are fescue based with no courser/Ryegrass species

3) Golf Fairways although these areas take substantial traffic it  is less intensive  than Tees – so low maintainance and decent cosmetic turf appearance are very important criteria for the grass selection to use in these areas.

The differences between Fescue and ryegrass are nowhere  more apparent than on the golf course – And these days any course must make critical management decisions on the inclusion of any amenity ryegrass. Inclusion is always a compromise:  the Dwarf Ryegrass adds significant wear tolerance to any golf course and cultivars are improving still at a significant rate – cultivars cannot be compared to Dwarfs from even 10 years ago – however they are generally still coarser than fescue.

A mixture without Ryegrass has in the past been seen as a lower quality offering in Golf but we have seen such significant breeding improvements that this in many cases is not true anymore.

Fescues are coming back into vogue – ery much due to green pressure in most EEC countries on restricting fertiliser application – fescues perform ideally in low fertiliser applications and we are finding many Greenkeppers are now very interested in assessing the role fescues can play on their home courses.

Please find below some of the principal differences.

Fine Fescues

A very fine-textured family of grasses, which include Chewing Fescue, Creeping Red Fescue, Hard Fescue and Sheep’s Fescue.

Pros:

  • Shade tolerant (tolerant in up to 65% shade).
  • Low maintenance (require little watering or fertilizer).
  • Very winter hardy.
  • Blends well with bluegrass in mixes.

Cons:

  • Slower to germinate (14-21 days).
  • Not durable to heavy traffic.

Perennial Ryegrass

Very popular, this grass shows up in golf courses, sports fields and home lawns all over the world and has seen the most intensive breeding improvements that has focused upon  improving fineness of leaf and increasing wear tolerance.

Pros:

  • Very fast germination (7 days).
  • Good disease resistance.
  • Dark green colour, fine leaf texture.
  • Blends well with Smooth stalk and fine fescues.

Cons:

  • Does not spread – a ‘bunch’ grass growing from a central crown that detracts ball roll.
  • Not very winter hardy.
  • Not shade tolerant.
  • Requires regular watering and fertilizer.