Turf tourism

As I say at the end of every year, it has been another extraordinary year for studying grass around the world. See these links for some of my favorite photos (and flight maps) from 2015 and 2016.

When I led a seminar in Idaho last month about Turf Around the World, I wanted to show a map of the flights I’d taken this year. I didn’t have a map to show then, however, because of some software problems.

The idea that golf courses in Japan with the two green system have a summer green and a winter green is not quite correct. Nor is the two green system used exclusively with one warm-season grass green and one with cool-season grass.

Golf architect Paul Jansen is in the midst of what he calls the Sustainable by Design tour. He is making an intensive tour around South and Southeast Asia, visiting and studying some of the most interesting places and golf courses.

I took 82 flights in 2016, for a total of 221,494 km (137,000 miles), and I’ve just mapped them. That’s more than 5 times the circumference of the earth. Routes flown once are more blue, and the routes flown more often are more red.

When Eric Reasor flew from Tennessee to Thailand, he brought along measuring tools to assess how golf balls roll across putting greens. He visited 22 golf courses in 5 days.

I made a map of all the flights I took in 2015.1 After seeing the map, I scrolled through my photos from these places. It was an extraordinary year for studying grass around the world.

At Real Club de Golf El Prat, host of the 2015 Spanish Open, 3,600 trees fell in a violent windstorm on 9 December 2014. The club has shared this video that shows the scale of the damage, and the impressive work that was done in the aftermath of the storm.

16th green and 17th hole at Tublamu Navy Golf Course If you didn’t know it was there, you would miss the right turn off Thailand’s National Highway 4. There’s no sign for the golf course on the main road.

I had thought the fans in the tea fields of Shizuoka were used to reduce fungal diseases of the foliage during hot and humid weather. I’ve learned that the actual reason for these fans is to prevent frost from forming on the leaves during winter, by blowing warmer air (cold air is heavier, and sinks) down to the plants.