Peninsula Golf & Country Club Maintenance and Agronomy: Cart Restrictions

Lately with abundant rainfall I have been hearing a lot of questions about why we need to be cart path only when the course seems to be draining fine after the rain stops. I wanted to try and explain some of the issues involved in making the decision.

I don't ever want to inconvenience the members or take away from the enjoyment of your round of golf but CPO decisions involve more complex issues than most people realize. It's not about whether or not the carts leave ruts in the ground, but more about the long term health of the soil structure and turf. The time of year and number of rounds (carts) also plays a big part in how conservative I need to be.

There are two main issues. When the soil is wet, especially on the surface, the water acts as a lubricant and allows the soil particles to compact more readily. This causes long term rooting problems as well as water infiltration problems during drier weather. When we were having dry weather back in July I was fighting a lot of these issues related to water percolation. We had a lot of localized dry spot (LDS) in high traffic areas. LDS occurs in compacted areas and the result is that normal irrigation water will not penetrate the surface and move down to the root zone. These areas then require wetting agents and manual watering which is a big job when it comes to fairways and rough.

The other issue during very hot and humid weather like yesterday (8/17/17) is called wet wilt and can be very detrimental very quickly. When you get a heavy downpour, followed by the sun coming back out on really hot days, the turf can't cool itself and everywhere a cart drives on wilted turf causes acute damage. Watching the radar and the storm forming yesterday, combined with high temperatures, I saw the potential for this to happen so I called it cart path only as soon as the rain started. Once the storm passed, and the threat for wet wilt passed, I reversed the cart restriction. During cooler times of the season I never would have taken action like that so quickly with just a brief rain event. We have had a lot of rain lately (10.6 inches in the past 30 days), so it wouldn't have taken much for that scenario to play out yesterday and I was overly conservative.

In regards to areas getting damaged where carts can't go it's actually these same issues that contribute to those problems. Your feet actually have a higher PSI than your cart tires, plus spikes, so you will notice issues on tees and walk up areas to tees and greens due to wear and compaction even though there are no carts allowed there. All of those areas get traffic even when they are saturated and we are cart path only. Additionally, those areas do get traffic from all of the maintenance activities we do on a daily and weekly basis. These factors, combined with some disease and insect damage, is what led to turf loss on the tees on 4 and 6.

I'm sorry for any inconvenience these decisions cause. It's always a difficult one to make because I know that it detracts from the enjoyment of golf and makes the course play longer and harder. As I said, I never want to inconvenience the members but I have to make sure the course remains in acceptable condition throughout the year.