Viridescent - the Asian Turfgrass Center blog

How to Prepare an Elephant Polo Ground

When you want to play elephant polo, you surely think of having a well-prepared field. But just six weeks before this year's King's Cup Elephant Polo Tournament, the field needed a lot of work. Minachai Srichanya, the golf course superintendent at nearby Banyan Golf Club, coordinated a volunteer maintenance program to turn the field from this ...

... into this.

What work was done to get such an improvement on this field, situated at an army camp just south of Hua Hin? First, the edge of the field was marked, the grasses (primarily Zoysia matrella) and weeds were mown, and clippings were removed. This work was done by the golf course maintenance staff from Banyan Golf Club, with support from Jebsen & Jessen and The Toro Co.

Then, fertilizer was spread to stimulate grass growth, and sand topdressing was applied where necessary to smooth the surface.

Then it was just a matter of more mowing, and time, to produce the results for this hotly contested international polo tournament. No word yet on how much soil compaction is caused by polo elephants. More than from ponies, one presumes. 

Photos provided thanks to Banyan Golf Club and the Kings Cup Elephant Polo Tournament.

Turfgrass Performance Data at the Open Championship

The machine I'm operating in the photo above, on the 1^st green of the Old Course, is the STRI Trueness Meter. This measuring device, which I mentioned in a previous post, is designed to measure the amount of vertical and horizontal deviation a ball will experience as it rolls across a putting green. In essence, this device measures how smooth the greens are, whereas the stimpmeter measures how fast greens are. Are green speed and surface smoothness positively correlated? Our measurements this week have shown that factors other than smoothness have an effect on speed, at times, so in some cases the smoothness readings are better when the stimpmeter readings have been lower. I discussed the relationship between surface trueness, or smoothness, and the green speed with Dr. Christian Spring of STRI. He says that there is a positive relationship between the two, but that it is not necessarily a causal relationship.

One maintenance technique that improves the smoothness of greens and improves the consistency of smoothness between greens is lightweight rolling. If you haven't been to St. Andrews and the Old Course, you will enjoy the video of the 13th green being rolled this week as the STRI tournament agronomy team approaches to begin collecting performance data on the green. Seeing the roller go across the green gives some indication of the vast size of this putting surface (over 3500 m²).

Richard Windows from STRI and championship agronomist for this Open Championship uses a stimpmeter to measure the green speed of the practice green near the 1^st tee (see below). We measure the soil moisture, the green speed, the trueness, and the firmness of the greens, and it is quite useful to have these data. I think, and I will write more about this when I have time, that we should be less concerned about what color the grass is, and should simply focus on the playability/performance data. I often hear phrases about golf course maintenance such as "brown is the new green" or "green is soft" or "lean and mean" or "firm and fast" etc.. But that is irrelevant and is mostly visually descriptive. By some simple collection of data about the playability of the course, it is possible to better describe the playing conditions of the course, and that is more relevant to the game of golf.

Field Renovation for the 2010 World Cup

I received this document with three pages of photos of the renovation process for 72 playing fields to be used for the 2010 FIFA World Cup at South Africa next month. Click here or on the photo at right to download the file (2 MB).

Ten fields will be used for the tournament matches, and the remaining fields are for training, as home practice fields for each of the 32 teams in the tournament, and there are even three fields prepared just for the tournament referees. The fields are mostly kikuyugrass, but for the tournament have been overseeded with perennial ryegrass to provide a vibrant green color and some wear resistance during the South African winter. The document about the field preparation is provided by Redexim as much of their equipment was used in the renovation and overseeding of the playing fields.