playability

Yesterday I spoke with a group of turfgrass managers in the Philippines at the Nutranta Turf Science in Action seminar. I talked about plant growth regulator (PGR) use in a tropical environment and what to expect when using PGRs—especially trinexapac-ethyl—in the Philippines.

A couple months ago I was struck by this post—“Problems with surrogate markers”—on Andrew Gelman’s blog. “Wow”, I thought, “this seems related to turfgrass management in a lot of ways.”

Last week I spent a few days in Fukuoka. I was there for the 103rd Japan Amateur Golf Championship. On the the morning of July 5, I recorded a short iron shot landing on the 16th green at the host venue, Keya Golf Club.

This question arrived recently to my inbox. I paraphrase: “Sir my greens are hard, the ball bounces and goes beyond the hole. Please give me recommendations on the steps taken to keep green soft.

A correspondent wrote to ask about the ever popular topic of Si and green speed: Pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but I had a conversation with our rep from […] fertilizer company about my frustration in not being able to increase our green speed […].

Korai green on the 18th at Keya GC during the 2014 KBC Augusta tournament. Why would one deliberately use manilagrass (Zoysia matrella, or korai in Japan) on golf course putting greens?

Golf course architects or developers may sometimes want to produce links-style courses with links-style playing surfaces. In East and Southeast Asia, the grass that should be used, if one wants to produce such surfaces, is manilagrass (Zoysia matrella).