Bentgrass and tropical dew point temperature

Many golf course superintendents around the world manage creeping bentgrass greens for some portion of the year in what we could call tropical conditions. One of the places where summers have tropical heat, and where there are a lot of bentgrass greens, is Japan.

I’ve written about this before.

Another place with tropical heat, and with some bentgrass greens, is Myrtle Beach.

I wanted to check this for the summer of 2025, so I checked the dew point temperatures for Bangkok, Myrtle Beach (South Carolina, USA), and Fukuoka (Japan). Specifically, I got the dew point temperatures for these locations.

• Bangkok: Ballyshear Golf Club, just east of the city, near Thai Country Club
• Myrtle Beach: The Man O’ War Golf Club in Myrtle Beach
• Shima Seaside GC in Fukuoka

There are no bentgrass greens in Bangkok. I’m using Bangkok as the reference location for tropical conditions.

In the fifteen full weeks from 2 June 2025 through 14 September 2025, the lowest average dew point temperature (calculated as the average of each hour during the week) at Bangkok was 23.1 °C. For this analysis, I’ll use that temperature as the criterion for what is a tropical dew point.

In Myrtle Beach, there were seven weeks in the summer of 2025 (so far) with an average dew point equal to or higher than the lowest dew point in Bangkok.

In Fukuoka, there were ten such weeks.

Furthermore, in Fukuoka there were seven weeks in the summer of 2025 with a higher dew point temperature than Bangkok had during that same week. That’s something you feel when you get on the plane in Bangkok and get off the plane in Japan.