Turf tourism

Last November I saw a creeping bentgrass nursery in Japan. The nursery had been fumigated to kill seeds in the soil before the bentgrass seeds were planted. I was surprised to see, scattered across the nursery, plants with big leaves that clearly were not creeping bentgrass.

The median blog post on this site in 2019 got 244 views. And there were a few up around 1,000 to 2,000 views. There were these top 10 that everyone read.

At the end of every year, I like to look at my flight map and at some of my favorite turf photos. In 2019 I was on 56 flights over 161,473 km (100,335 miles).

I went for a walk in Kumamoto yesterday morning to take a few photos of the grass on the Kumamoto City Tram. This page shows how the grass sections are installed.

Last month I made a trip to Hua Hin and visited two of the fine golf courses there—Royal Hua Hin GC and Banyan GC (now Pineapple Valley GC Hua Hin).

Mike Richardson shared an image of aerifying half a green at a time. The purpose of this, the superintendent said, was to always have a good surface for the hole.

From June of 1932, when he arrived in Tokyo, until the war between the United States and the Empire of Japan began in December 1941, Joseph Grew served as the United States Ambassador to Japan.

As I say at the end of every year, it was another extraordinary year for studying grass around the world. In 2018 I took 107 flights for a total distance of 314,748 km (195,575 miles).

There are a couple amazing courses that you won’t find on the usual maps of golf clubs in Japan. Most golfers I talked with this year had no idea that there were courses there.

On August 23 at 4 a.m., Andrew McDaniel and I walked into a 7-11 in Fukuoka to get the latest issue of Weekly Golf Digest. Golf magazines in Japan are pretty amazing to begin with.