A visit to The Talking Greenkeeper

I’ve been listening to Joe Gulotti’s The Talking Greenkeeper since the first episode back in 2018. I’m sure many of you listen to his show as well. We’ve heard Joe talk about the turf on the Montchanin course that he manages. I recently had a chance to visit the course with Joe.

I had been in Japan for a week, and I flew from Tokyo to Newark and caught a train down to Wilmington where I met Joe for dinner and we planned out our schedule for the next two days. We would visit the Montchanin course the next morning, then I’d go for a meeting with John Emerson at the University of Delaware, then visit John Jacob at Deerfield. Two days later we’d leave before sunrise to New Jersey for the Rutgers Field Day, and then Joe would drop me off at EWR for my next flight.

I was impressed with the conditions as we arrived at the course. There’s a lot of high quality turf out there, and it looks good from a distance and it looks good up close too.

The photo above is the first green. There’s one sprinkler head that covers this green. There’s one sprinkler head on each green, actually. How’s that for coverage? And the tees don’t have irrigation. It took me a few minutes to comprehend what I was seeing. Maybe it was the jet lag, or maybe it was because I’ve never seen turf of that quality in mid-summer with such a limited irrigation system. When Joe says he needs to spend some time hand-watering, I understand better now. Those unirrigated bermudagrass tees were impressive.

The short game area adjoining the Montchanin course was covered with healthy bentgrass. Perhaps a little too healthy.

We took a look at a soil profile, confirmed that we could squeeze water out of the thatch/mat layer, and combined with the recent 21% OM2 test result, discussed some effective strategies to bring that OM2 value down a bit.

Then we were off to the University of Delaware, where I met with John Emerson and a couple faculty members about his intensive MLSN project. John and I had some amazing ice cream at the UDairy Creamery and called that our lunch.

Then we met back up with Joe at Deerfield, where John Jacob is the superintendent. We looked at more good grass, at another place where turf growth is checked with routine measurement of ClipVol and GvX.

The next day we were off at sunrise to New Jersey, where we saw some fine grasses and some induced problems at the Rutgers Field Day.

It was a treat to see the area and hang out with those guys for a day. A lot of people have asked me what the Montchanin course was like. Joe gets to be a well-known greenkeeper around the world, because of his podcast, and I’m sure some of the curiosity comes from that. And I’m happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw. Next time I’d like to bring my clubs.