Ten Years Ago on a Golf Course in Japan: part 2

I was the golf course superintendent at Habu CC in Chiba prefecture near Tokyo from September 2000 to August 2001. Ten years later, I’m spending this summer at Japan, partly to study and collect data about turfgrass performance, but also to remember what it is like to be a superintendent. Now halfway through my time at Japan this summer, I’ve come up with a list of three reasons why it is especially difficult to be a golf course superintendent here.

1. During July and August it is too hot for creeping bentgrass to grow well. This afternoon on a golf course at Chiba, the soil temperatures of a Penncross creeping bentgrass green were 36.3° at 2.5 cm, 34.8° at 5 cm, and 32.4° at 10 cm. Since July 1, I’ve yet to record a soil temperature on a creeping bentgrass green at less than 23.4°. In August, it is hotter on average at Osaka than it is at Atlanta, Miami, and Singapore. Tokyo is also hot and humid, averaging 31.1° for a high each day in August, with a relative humidity of 71%. That makes for a heat index in the shade of 37.6° C (99.7° F) on average every day in August.

2. So with such hot temperatures, we would need to have good irrigation systems, right? But golf courses in Japan have irrigation systems that are inadequate for the needs of the grass. There are essentially no quick couplers, so hand-watering, if done at all, is usually done by applying water from portable 1000 L tanks. This is not very effective but when there are no quick couplers, one doesn’t have many other options. Most courses don’t have fairway irrigation at all, and even the courses with the best irrigation systems are likely to have just a single-row system. Supplying water to the grass during the summer is one of the most difficult tasks to manage for golf course superintendents in Japan. 

3. The hot summer months when the bentgrass struggles to survive and when irrigation water is applied however it can be are also the times when the Zoysia matrella (korai) fairways and Zoysia japonica (noshiba) roughs are growing at their fastest rate, requiring more frequent mowing. With the need for handwatering and also the need for more frequent mowing during the summers, it is especially challenging then, at Japan, to have relatively small crew sizes. Most courses have only ten to fifteeen people working on course maintenance. It is a real struggle to complete all the necessary work.

I remember dealing with all of these challenges when I worked at Habu CC ten years ago. After visiting so many golf courses this summer, I see these same three challenges for golf course superintendents still exisit. During the turf science seminars I give in the winter, the most popular topics include management of soil moisture, managing creeping bentgrass during the summer, and management of ultradwarf bermudagrass. Each of those topics is in some way related to the three points identified above as the reason why Japan is one of the most difficult places to be a golf course superintendent.