April 26, 2006, 12:01AM
Turf wars play out on top Houston
courses
Carlton Woods, Redstone feature modern
grasses
By DOUG PIKE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Redstone Golf Club's Tournament Course and the Club at Carlton Woods' Fazio layout, two of Houston's newest courses, offer different but excellent looks at modern turfgrass technology.
For the Shell Houston Open, Redstone superintendent Roger Goettsch and crew pushed that course's Tif Sport fairways and Mini Verdie greens to their limits. The PGA Tour insists on premium conditions. Its guidelines make for a beautiful and challenging golf course, but they're tough on the turf.
Just two days after the tournament, Goettsch said, Redstone's Bermuda is fast on its way to recovery.
"The greens are looking great," he said Tuesday. "The rough got trampled a bit, but it will come out."
The divots and pitch marks left by the PGA Tour will heal soon enough, but not before Houston's hackers resume making their own marks — on the trees and sprinkler boxes — around the public golf course.
Newer varieties of Bermuda grass such as those used at Redstone are genetically engineered to resist drought, pests and disease, Goettsch said. The Zeon hybrid of zoysia grass used on Carlton Woods' Fazio Course is every bit as resilient.
"We developed it right here in Poteet," said David Doguet, owner of Bladerunner Farms, which rolled all the sod onto Fazio's course at Carlton Woods.
The job at Carlton Woods required "about 500 truckloads," Doguet said.
Each truck hauled dozens of 100-foot rolls of sod, and it took nearly five months to lay those miles of turf.
Zoysia grass has a broader, heavier leaf than that of any Bermuda variety, and its dense growth pattern offers firm, tight support for golf balls.
On Monday, Carlton Woods hosted a nine-hole skins game with PGA Tour players K.J. Choi, Roland Thatcher, Jeff Maggert and Blaine McCallister, along with baseball superstars Roger Clemens and Johnny Bench.
The tour guys' divots traveled farthest down Carlton Woods' pristine fairways, and a member of the club's staff followed the group to fill those shallow holes with sand.
A past knock on zoysia was its healing time. The turf is thick and lush but slow-growing, which made it a poor choice for high-traffic tracks. Doguet said the newer Zeon repairs itself more quickly.
The cost of zoysia always has been an issue.
Enough of that pretty turf to make a golf course boosts initial cost by 25 to 50 percent over Bermuda, Doguet said, but the trade-off is a surface that requires roughly half the nutrients and water.
Goettsch said also that zoysia's thicker leaf is rougher on mowing equipment. Since it grows more slowly, however, it can be mowed less frequently than Bermuda.
Zoysia is more shade-tolerant than Bermuda. Sienna Plantation Golf Club and a few other local courses have planted zoysia on sun-deprived tee boxes, and results generally are good.
As for Redstone's Bermuda and the Zeon at Carlton Woods, the grass is impressively green on both sides of the fence.