Thailand

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).

This is a quick way to get smoother fairways. The fairways at Bangsai Country Club near Bangkok have been rolled with a 10 ton vibratory road roller to make them smoother and, one presumes, a bit firmer.

I participated in a pitch performance workshop put on by the Football Association of Thailand and the Thai League. John Ledwidge answers a question during the FA Thailand & Thai League’s Pitch Performance Workshop on August 5.

On April 22 I planted some ‘Sena’ manilagrass with the help of staff from the GolfEast company. We were careful to plant at an exact rate, and we documented the grow-in through digital image analysis.

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).

Last year I wrote about a soil temperature turfhack. The soil temperature is almost always between the day’s high and low temperature. The soil temperature at a 5 cm depth immediately after planting manilagrass stolons on 22 April.

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.

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).

These are the slides and handout for my seminar tomorrow in Bangkok. I don’t expect to record a screencast video of this presentation; the handout is 5 pages and covers most of what I expect to discuss.

This is an interesting story about a common grass that rarely appears in a lawn as just a single species – as a monostand. But at an especially high profile location in Bangkok, the lawns are almost pure javagrass (Polytrias indica).