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.

More About Golf Course Floods at Thailand

The widespread flooding in Thailand has covered millions of hectares. These images from satellite photos taken on October 24 (downloaded from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research website, then cropped and annotated by me), show a few of the golf courses at Pathum Thani and Ayudhaya. 

And here is my former residence at Sam Khok. No dry land to be seen.

Golf Course Flooding at Thailand

Yesterday on a flight departing Bangkok I flew over much of the flooded area in central Thailand. Riverdale Golf Club was still dry (above), but the adjacent 27 holes at Bangkok Golf Club are all flooded. See below for the normally sedate appearance of Bangkok GC (July 2009). 

Many of the courses around Bangkok are flooded or are at risk of inundation during these floods, as are many areas of the city. Here are dramatic images of the flooding in a photo gallery from The Atlantic. For the golf courses that are flooded, I expect the grass to survive. Fortunately, the warm-season grasses that are used at courses around Bangkok, zoysia, bermuda, and seashore paspalum, are able to tolerate weeks and even months of submersion. Dr. Jack Fry's paper Submersion Tolerance of Warm-season Turfgrasses explains that zoysia and bermuda can survive for two or three months under water. Research at Singapore found that seashore paspalum tolerated waterlogging and it is expected to recover as well once the flood waters recede.

In October 2006, when the Asian Turfgrass Center was being constructed at Bangsai GC in Ayuddhaya province north of Bangkok, floodwaters from the same river overflowed their banks and it was necessary to increase the height of the dike wall around the research area (right). That dike wall has been raised again, and it was raised yet again this year to protect the property from the floods.

Now five years later, the course is again at the risk of flooding but the higher flood barriers around it have so far protected the course from the rising waters. I flew over Ayuddhaya yesterday, and one can see the 27 holes at Bangsai, the only dry land for kilometers in the flooded Chao Praya basin.

What Grasses Are Growing on Golf Courses in Thailand?

In 2006, ATC conducted a survey of the grass types on golf courses in Thailand. Surveys were sent to the more than 200 courses in Thailand, and 41 of the surveys were completed and returned. Data from that survey are shown in this table:

I've visited or played golf at 24 different golf courses in Thailand since January 1, and I thought it would be interesting to summarize the different grass types that are being grown on these courses. Of the 24 courses I've been to this year, 79% have hybrid bermudagrass on the greens, 4% seashore paspalum, and 17% use Zoysia matrella. On fairways this year, 38% of the courses I've visited have seashore paspalum, bermudagrass and Zoysia matrella are each on 29% of the courses, and a native grass mixture is on 4%. 

I like the native grasses on the fairways because of reduced fertilizer and water requirements and the paucity of any pests on Zoysia or Axonopus in Thailand. Not only do these fairways have great color (see at right), they also have great playability.

At Thailand there has been rapid adoption of new bermudagrass cultivars. Nineteen of the courses I visited this year have bermudagrass on the greens, and of those there are two with Miniverde, four with Novotek, five with Tifdwarf, and eight with TifEagle.

Many of the older courses in Thailand such as Royal Hua Hin (pictured below) and Royal Bangkok Sports Club use a fine-bladed Zoysia on the greens. This grass requires little maintenance and produces a fine playing surface for year-round play. One thing I don't see much of on zoysia greens is algae — the grass leaves provide such a dense cover of the ground and the irrigation requirements are such that algae never has a chance to gain a foothold.

I wrote more about warm-season grass selection and maintenance in this article for Golf Business Asia in 2008. But no matter what grasses are used at the courses in Thailand, I think you will find that the playing conditions across the country are consistently among the best in Southeast Asia. With an active golf course superintendents association (the Thai GCSA), regular educational events such as the Sustainable Turfgrass Management in Asia conference, and a steady stream of new golf courses being built and older courses being renovated, Thailand is an exciting place to study grass.

A Plot of Cities Where Warm-season Grasses Grow, and more

I made the bubble plot above to see how the differences in temperature and sunlight and rainfall between cities would appear if plotted this way. The data are from climatological normals provided by national meteorological services and the World Meteorological Organization, collected in some cases from the climate section of a city's page on Wikipedia.

I made this plot for a few reasons. I saw a job posting for a superintendent position in Asia saying that experience working in a Florida-type climate would be desired, and I wanted to plot a few cities this way to see how cities in Asia compared with Florida. Someone also asked me if I thought it was more difficult to manage warm-season grasses in Singapore or in Florida, and I thought that a plot such as this might make my answer more clear. And I also notice as I travel that a grass that grows so well in Honolulu, for example, may not grow well at all in Bangkok. There are clear differences in suitability of grasses for different growing environments. And as I work with some new software, I saw a tutorial to make this type of bubble plot on the FlowingData website and I wanted to try it for myself.

When plotted this way with mean annual temperature on one axis and hours of sunshine on another axis (the area of the circle for each city is proportional to annual rainfall), one can see that the cities in Asia tend to have a higher annual temperature, have less annual sunshine than the cities plotted from the USA, and have substantially more precipitation. A quick look at the bubble plot shows that Singapore, for example, has about 60% the sunshine of Miami while receiving almost twice the rainfall. 

This doesn't tell the whole story about which grasses perform best in a certain area. We can also consider the winter temperatures, the summer temperatures, the timing of rainfall and dry seasons, etc., but simply plotting by temperature and sunshine tells us a lot. 

Turfgrass managers in Southeast Asia know that zoysiagrass (Zoysia matrella) and broadleaf carpetgrass (Axonopus compressus) thrive in this climate while bermudagrass maintained as a turfgrass struggles. This type of plot helps us to understand why. At the Marukatayawan Palace in Thailand, we see that zoysia grows in the sun and broadleaf carpetgrass covers the shaded areas under the trees.

These native grasses thrive when maintained as turfgrass in this region, while grasses such as bermudagrass which have a higher light requirement cannot compete with zoysia even in full sun. Why is that? Because even in full sun, there is still relatively little sunshine in Southeast Asia compared with Florida.

Recovery from the 2004 Tsunami at Tublamu GC in Thailand

Tublamu Navy Golf Course sits on a flat, sandy stretch of land beside the Andaman Sea in Phang Nga province, just north of Phuket.

I traveled to Tublamu GC during the rebuilding process of the course in 2005 after the tsunami in 2004 destroyed the course and clubhouse, killing golfers and caddies and course workers. If you didn't read the article in Golf Magazine about the tsunami's affect on this course and how it was rebuilt, you may be interested to learn the story of what happened that day and in the subsequent months.

Download the article here (PDF, 1.4 MB).

Philippine Turfgrass Association Meeting at Sta Elena

I had a great time last week at the 1^st Quarterly Meeting of the Philippine Turfgrass Association (PTA) at Sta Elena Golf Club in Laguna. The title of my presentation was Application of Turfgrass Science Principles to Improve Grass Conditions. I spoke about modifying the growing environment to create the desired playing characteristics, and we had an excellent discussion about organic matter management on greens, fertilization programs, timing of core aerification, and a range of other topics. Download the seminar handout here [PDF, 172 KB].

This seminar was pre-approved for GCSAA education points as many of the PTA members are also members of the GCSAA. Nicer Landas, CGCS, is the president of the PTA this year and is also one of the few certified golf course superintendents in Asia.

Sta Elena is one of the premier clubs in the Philippines and I had a chance to go around the course with superintendent Tim Walker in the afternoon. Walker gave an introductory presentation about the club, the grasses used, and explained how certain soil conditions and insects are particularly challenging to manage. The course is in excellent condition and the Tifeagle greens, which have been there for more than a decade and are some of the oldest Tifeagle surfaces in Asia, were superb. Like most of the courses built in Southeast Asia during the 1990's, Sta Elena GC is wall-to-wall bermudagrass. 

At Thailand it seems I often play off zoysia or seashore paspalum surfaces, and it was a treat to play off hybrid bermudagrass at Sta Elena. Do you see my ball in the fairway in the photo below? After a staggering drive over a ravine to place the ball there, I proceeded to hit my second shot (this is a par 5, by the way) over the green in the far distance, but I got it up and down for a birdie. I'd like to congratulate the course maintenance team at Sta Elena for producing such good conditions, obviously applying turfgrass science principles to improve grass conditions!

Honda LPGA Thailand and Asian Turfgrass Field Day

This week brings the season-opening event on the LPGA Tour to Thailand's Siam Country Club. Defending champion Ai Miyazato and #1-ranked Yani Tseng headline the stellar field. The tournament is being contested over seashore paspalum fairways (Salam variety) and hybrid bermudagrass greens (Novotek variety).

Sittichai Dusadeeporn is the Director of Golf Course Maintenance at Siam CC and will be speaking at the Sustainable Turfgrass Management in Asia 2011 conference about how he prepares the course for an LPGA tournament. And our first stop on the Asian Turfgrass Field Day will be Siam CC where we will see these grasses and just a few weeks after the tournament.

From Siam CC, we will proceed to other area golf courses to look at test plots of products and maintenance techniques applied to different grasses. Some of the highlights include:

• Control of zoysiagrass seedheads with imazapic
• Conversion to new grass using glyphosate or dazomet
• Playability of different grass types and practical use of measuring equipment
• Are pre-emergent herbicides useful in the management of turfgrass in SE Asia?
• Control of bermudagrass in seashore paspalum
• Control of seashore paspalum in bermudagrass
• Evaluation of new herbicides for weed control
• Comparison of different types of zoysiagrass
• Organic matter management in sand rootzoones

The field day will conclude at Laem Chabang International CC with a look at different nozzle types for effective spraying and the use of water-sensitive paper (always interesting!) to demonstrate that, along with a few other turfgrass equipment demonstrations and then a fun golf game around the chipping course. Michelle Wie is in Thailand now for the LPGA tournament and said "Everyone is so nice and welcoming in Thailand. I love it!" You will too, so if you are planning to attend this fun and educational conference, get your registration form submitted now to hold your place.

Collecting Dollar Spot With Dr. Tredway in Southeast Asia

Turfgrass pathologist Dr. Lane Tredway from North Carolina State University recently made a visit to Southeast Asia for the purpose of collecting dollar spot samples. From ATC's Thailand base, we went to Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines to collect dollar spot from many different grass types: bermudagrass, zoysia, seashore paspalum, carpetgrass, creeping bentgrass — even from some sedges. There is not much creeping bentgrass in Southeast Asia but we traveled to high elevations to find it at Dalat in Vietnam, at the spectacular Mount Kinabalu Golf Club in Sabah (below), and at Camp John Hay in Baguio.

Dr. Tredway has chronicled this trip in a post entitled Dollar Spot Expedition to Southeast Asia on the Turf Diseases website. 

Dollar spot is ubiquitous and is especially so on seashore paspalum turf. This project looks at the different strains of dollar spot as they are found on different grass types and in different geographical and climatic areas. The idea is that a better understanding of the dollar spot pathogen itself will allow for the development of better control measures for this disease in the future.

An Interesting Technique to Modify Fairway Conditions in Thailand

Many of you will be familiar with the Laem Chabang International Country Club and its typical (for courses built in the 1990's) Tifdwarf bermudagrass greens and Tifway 419 bermudagrass fairways. Laem Chabang has been one of the sites for the Asian Turfgrass Field Day in recent years. Bermudagrass in this part of Thailand is notorious for having a high susceptibility to weed invasion, especially during the rainy season, and to require large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer to produce the desired surface. Seashore paspalum, as you know, performs better than bermudagrass in wet soils, and has a lower nitrogen requirement once established than does hybrid bermudagrass.

At the Sustainable Turfgrass Management in Asia 2009 seminars, I advocated the tolerance of, and sometimes even the deliberate planting of, turfgrass polystands in fairways and roughs. Why? Because the various attributes of the turfgrasses used in Southeast Asia can be complementary when the species are grown together, and the grasses are very difficult to eradicate when they begin to invade a monostand of a different species.

How many courses in Southeast Asia that try to have a seashore paspalum monostand fight bermuda as a weed? I would venture to say that all do, and especially in areas with poor irrigation coverage or where the turf is maintained at moderate to high mowing heights, I suggest that in the long term it is a losing battle. Bermuda will outperform paspalum in those areas. How many courses trying to maintain a bermuda monostand fight zoysia encroachment? Many do, and it is usually the zoysia areas that get larger and larger. And seashore paspalum can invade zoysia and bermuda as well — all this is natural. Why not take advantage of these grasses that seem to want to grow, and manage them to create a visually attractive playing surface?

At Laem Chabang, the Tifway 419 fairways were sliced on 10 cm centers and then caddies from the club planted individual plants of seashore paspalum into the fairways. How long does that take, you might wonder? About eight hours of work for 200 caddies to do one par 5 fairway.

After this slicing and planting of paspalum the fairways were topdressed with sand, and then it was maintenance as usual. I visited Laem Chabang five months after seashore paspalum was introduced to this fairway, and I found the conditions and the appearance of the fairway to be very good. The striping and color of the fairway appeared as would a paspalum fairway, but there is still a large amount of bermuda in the fairway. I expect that in wet areas and during the rainy season the paspalum will grow well and provide a dense turf cover when bermuda would not, and that during the dry season the bermuda will thrive and provide a dense turf cover when the paspalum would require large amounts of supplemental irrigation to produce such a surface during that season.

Thanks to course superintendent Mr. Boonthong Ngamsapang for the photos of the seashore paspalum planting process.