Uncategorized | Asian Turfgrass Center

A treemap showing the number of golf holes in 30 countries

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 06:13:00 +0000

You can find the treemap here.

This was a follow-up to my analysis of the 30 countries that sent the most visits to the blog this year. I thought it would be interesting to show the number of golf holes per country all in one chart, so I made one. The full interactive version is here, with a static screenshot pasted below.

Zoysia and growth potential in Beijing and Seoul

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 11:46:30 +0000

This chart shows the temperature-based growth potential for cool (C₃) and warm (C₄) season grasses at Beijing and Seoul.

It is too cold in winter for any type of grass to grow, and during the spring, summer, and autumn, C₃ species will grow more than C₄ species. Of course, C₄ species use less water than C₃ species, tend to be more salt tolerant, and in this type of climate, will require less mowing due to the shorter growing season.

Playing golf on a Zoysia japonica fairway near Seoul, March

Zoysia japonica is in common use as a fairway and rough turf around Seoul, more so than it is in Beijing.

Bentgrass greens and Zoysia japonica through the green near Seoul, March

Based on the similar temperatures between Seoul and Beijing, Zoysia japonica would certainly perform well in the summer in Beijing. But with colder winters in Beijing than in Seoul, one would need to be more concerned about potential winterkill. It would seem that Beijing winters would be almost too cold for Zoysia japonica, based on the temperatures at which this species was killed in this experiment by Patton and Reicher.

March golf near Seoul

Are Zoysia Fairways “Sticky”?

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:43:19 +0000

I've heard various objections made against the use of manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) on golf courses, one of those objections being that the grass is "sticky", that it grabs the ball or the club. In this video, we can see how the ball is grabbed, or not, by manilagrass fairways.

Keep in mind that what we see in the video is on fairways with typical maintenance, mown at 10 mm. There is no special effort made to have especially firm fairways and approaches. And this was during the rainy season. In the dry season (pictured below), those fairways are even faster and bouncier.