Existing Greens Drainage

Our drainage contractor, TDS, will be on-site next week to install slit drainage on our 18th green.  This green has remained closed throughout the winter due to severe drainage problems.  We are experiencing drainage issues on other greens as well that must be addressed in the near future.  The slit drainage process is completed in only 2 days and the green is typically reopened immediately and ready for play.  Other than the visible drainage trench lines, there is very little affect on the playability of the green.  For more information and photos of the process of slit draining greens, please visit here: http://www.tdsdrainage.com/existing.html

With regards to our greens and their drainage issues, I’d like to pass along some info to help you better understand what we are experiencing and why.

We often hear from members that “our greens already have drainage”.  Yes, this is true.  To my knowledge, our greens were renovated approximately 30 years ago and were constructed with materials that DID NOT meet proper greens mix specifications.  That being said, even precisely built putting greens have a typical lifespan of 20 years that is affected by many environmental, cultural and mechanical factors.  The major factors include climate, aerification and construction. 

A putting green’s infrastructure will change over time from weathering, particularly due to excessive moisture and/or constant freezing and thawing.  Obviously excessive moisture, particularly from October thru mid-April, is our main concern.  When greens are saturated due to excessive rains, they are easily compacted by traffic.  The resulting compaction greatly reduces the drainage capability of the greens.  We must restrict equipment and golfer traffic from the greens under these conditions to prevent unnecessary compaction.  Unfortunately, in the past our greens not only remained open for play when saturated, they were even mowed with heavy equipment under these conditions.  This has caused a great deal of compaction.

Aerification practices and frequency also play a key role in how putting green drainage will perform.  Core aerification is the single most important tool to maintain acceptable thatch levels.  Thatch retains a great deal of moisture which also results in saturated greens.  Core aerification physically removes thatch allowing moisture to better seek out the drainage channels.  We are making significant progress on reducing the thatch levels of our greens, but this does not entirely make up for compaction caused the during the time period when core aerification was abandoned.

Construction greatly impacts drainage, especially when there aren’t any efforts to immediately fix any drainage affected by it.  New irrigation was installed throughout the course in 2007/08.  Part of the installation process involves slicing in new control wire.  Many of our greens drainage outlets were compromised by this process and were not immediately corrected.  That being said, it is very difficult to even know that the outlet has been sliced due to the fact that this process does not involve an open trench.  The impact on the drainage would not be evident until experiencing heavy rainfall.  One very inexpensive way of preventing this is to install tracer wires with the greens drainage outlet pipes to easily locate and mark the drainage lines prior to any construction.  We will be installing tracer wire with all new greens drainage outlets.  

Proper drainage greatly affects the playability of the greens, but more importantly the health of the greens.  Saturated greens are very susceptible to excessive ball-marking, mower scalping, severe compaction and disease.  We currently have 5 greens that have serious drainage issues (#1, 12, 14, 15 and 18).  Of these 5, #18 is certainly the worst and requires immediate action.  The other 15 greens (13 regular and 2 putting greens) are beginning to show signs of drainage failure as well.  

The long range plan is to certainly slit drain all the greens to have consistent, properly drained healthy greens that can remain open 12 months a year.  I believe the best approach for accomplishing this project would be to spread it out over no more than 3 years.  We have 20 greens in total, including the putting greens, so we'd be looking at doing 6-7 greens each of those 3 years.