Zoysia

I was in Japan for two weeks to work at the KBC Augusta tournament, have meetings, and visit turfgrass sites. On this trip, I made a deliberate effort to record some videos to show a few things that I find interesting about turfgrass management in Japan.

Here’s an interesting new article by Katuwal et al.: Multilocational screening identifies new drought-tolerant, warm-season turfgrasses. This article describes the results for four species: bermudagrass, St. Augustinegrass, seashore paspalum, and zoysiagrass.

Korai (Zoysia) putting greens have a distinctive roll because of the stiff leaf blades. One consequence of this is a slower green speed than bermudagrass when given the same maintenance.

Have you ever seen seedheads on zoysia? Have you ever planted zoysia sod and seen a lot of seeds on some pieces but not on others? I’ve seen this a lot, and I’m not the only one.

I’m sometimes asked what my favorite golf course is. That’s a tough question to answer, because I don’t really rank courses that way. My way of ranking is more eclectic—I make lists of the best courses I’ve seen inside racetracks, best golf courses accessible only by boat, best extra holes, that sort of thing.

I made my first trip to Gainesville and the University of Florida last week when I visited the turfgrass field laboratory at Citra, then gave a seminar (recorded screencast here) on campus about my research.

I’ve noticed that traffic—just enough traffic—can transform some grasses into an amazing type of surface. I’ve seen this with Cynodon in China, with Festuca in Iceland, and in other places as well, but those are a couple that come to mind.

I saw an article in the Global Golf Post that states zoysiagrass “requires … less water .. than bermuda[grass].” I guess there’s not much fact-checking in golf industry magazines, but that egregious error would have been corrected had the article been fact-checked.

Last year I wrote about manilagrass (Zoysia matrella) sod on highway medians in Thailand. I showed photos of a recently planted median, and explained why zoysia doesn’t persist in this environment when maintained without supplemental irrigation and regular mowing.

That’s the question I was asking myself leading into the ＫＢＣオーガスタ tournament. Because it wasn’t just playing any kind of golf. It was professional golf, televised golf, and it also happened to rain 827 mm (32 inches) from the start of August until Friday morning of tournament week (August 27).