Supe’s On

Jeff Stickford

Asst. Superintendent

Winghaven Country Club

Water, Water Everywhere

Now that the “Dog Days” of summer are upon us, I’d like to crow about the one elixir every living thing needs to survive. No, not the glorious barley and hops libation that’s sitting in front of me as I write this. I’m not talking about Mother’s Milk either. I’m talking about WATER. In my eyes it’s the bloodline of any golf course. Miles and miles of pipe underground acting as veins carrying that sweet remedy to keep everything alive.

The beginning of the 2021 summer has been anything but typical for St. Louis. We’ve had some very timely rains and our irrigation systems haven’t had to work as hard as usual. But I can feel it coming: the long stretch from the end of July to the middle of September when the turf can’t handle one more day of cart traffic and the rough in un-irrigated areas crunches beneath your shoes. The greens are tired of “sips of water from the hose”. The entire course just wants a big gulp of glorious water.

Every golf course pays for it one way or another. Each option has its pros and cons. Hook into the city waterline and BOOM! You got water. Easy solution you might think? Well, that easy solution costs a pretty penny. So expensive in fact, you could purchase three brand new cars over one summer. The next option is to drill a well if you have a source.

The course would constantly pump water out of the well into a retention pond. Irrigation pumps now have a constant supply of water to pump out of that pond to water the course. The down side to this source is a little more complicated. Pumps fail all the time and wells collapse. Not a huge problem until you need to hire a company to drill 100 feet below the surface when something breaks. Plus, the electrical costs to run the well pump is one more line item in the budget. The last option is to dig a big hole and rely on Mother Nature to fill that hole with rain water. Hopefully every subsurface drain pipe on the course leads to that pond to help keep it full. I don’t trust Mother Nature and I never will. Not to mention how much water it takes to irrigate an 18hole course. You have to put in what you take out every night or your supply will be empty pretty quick.

Regardless of the water source, the “heart’’ of any course is the pump station. That darn thing just keeps pumping, pumping and pumping all the time. Like I said earlier, pumps fail. Pumps cost a lot of money and it takes time to replace them. If Mother Nature (who we don’t trust) isn’t doing her part and the pumps aren’t running the course is going to suffer a slow and painful death. Let’s just call it a golf course heart attack.

So, the next time you see a maintenance employee watering a green and get upset because he or she is in your way. Or the next time you hit your ball in the water hazard. Take two seconds and think how important that water is to the course and the game we all love to hate.