7 Lawn Care Tips From Golf Course Managers | Golf News & Tour Information

No matter what you think, your playing partners don’t care what you shoot. Your lawn is the same. Unless it’s exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, no one else thinks about your yard as much as you do. But you care about your lawn, and we care about ours, and that’s why we’re here.

Maintaining the quality of your golf course turf may not be realistic without a five- or six-figure maintenance budget. However, we spoke with a number of managers at top clubs in the Northeast who are convinced that you can have a healthy yard by simply applying a few tricks.

To learn more about the strategies that managers use that we can implement at home, we spoke with Jason Meersman, Director of Grounds at The Patterson Club in Fairfield, Connecticut, and Steve Aspinall, Manager at Watchung Valley Golf Club in Watchung, New Jersey. Here are the seven tips they emphasized above all else for a golf course-quality lawn.

Both Aspinall and Meersman say that in almost all aspects of home lawn care, less is more. “Typical problems that people have are self-inflicted,” says Aspinall. “For people who are really trying to maintain their lawn, a lot of them cut it too short, over-fertilize, over-water.”

Aspinall and Meersman agree that you only need to fertilize your lawn two or three times a year. “If you use too much fertilizer, your grass may look green, but your root system will probably look terrible,” Aspinall says. “You want the plant to grow stronger, and you don’t grow stronger by forcing it to grow stronger.”

Meersman says over-fertilizing just makes more work for yourself. “The more fertilizer you add,” he says, “the more water you need, the more fungicides you need, so the more you’re going to mow.”

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Because you’ll only be applying fertilizer a few times a year, timing is critical. Both managers recommend applying crabgrass and grub preventatives early in the spring. “The only two things that can really ruin a lawn that you can’t get back once they’ve happened are grubs and crabgrass,” says Meersman, who has worked at The Patterson Club for 12 years.

Meersman uses a product called One and Done, which protects against grubs and crabgrass. The fertilizer contains an insecticide, Acelepryn, and an herbicide, Dimension. Aspinall also uses this combination, both in Watchung Valley and at home. People in northern climates should apply this fertilizer in late April or early May, before the crabgrass emerges.

Aspinall uses more insecticide in late July or early August to kill the Japanese beetles that lay eggs that turn into larvae. Meersman uses gypsum and lime several times a year. “The gypsum helps make the nutrients that are already in the soil available to the plant, and the lime helps open up the soil a little bit for root growth,” Meersman says.

However, simply spreading fertilizer on your lawn isn’t enough. It needs to soak into the soil to have its full effect, so both managers spread their fertilizer before a rainstorm, which will wash the product into the soil. If no storms are in the forecast (which is common in the drier climates of the Southwest), be sure to run your irrigation system or hand-water your lawn immediately after spreading the product.

“You have about a week, a week and a half to water it, otherwise it starts to break down in the sunlight and becomes less effective,” says Aspinall.

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One of the most common mistakes Meersman sees homeowners make is not applying products correctly. “I have a neighbor who used a drip spreader instead of a broadcast spreader, and it killed a lot of grass in their yard,” he says. To avoid applying fertilizer incorrectly, read the packaging. Most products have instructions that tell you which spreader to use and what setting to set it to. Meersman also explains that you should apply the product evenly across your lawn, as missing or overlapping areas can ruin the grass in those areas.

Again, less is more. “You see a lot of people who run sprinklers every night, no matter what,” Aspinall says. “I don’t even do that on a green, which I mow to a tenth of an inch. Your yard doesn’t need to be that wet.”

Aspinall and Meersman recommend watering briefly every few days rather than soaking every night. Aspinall recommends watering heavily for 20 minutes every few days. It is important that the water seeps into the soil, so it is better to water briefly and heavily rather than lightly and for longer.

“The more water you have, the more saturated your soil is and the less happy your plants are going to be,” Meersman says. “If someone is running their irrigation system for 20 minutes every night, they’re probably getting way too much water and that can be detrimental.” He adds that he won’t water the greens at Patterson for more than six minutes at a time (not counting after aeration).

It’s important to find a happy medium with the length of your grass: not as short as a fairway, but also not as long as the U.S. Open rough. “Two and a half to three inches is ideal,” says Meersman. The rule of thumb is that the less light your yard gets, the longer you should keep the grass. “Grass is essentially a solar panel,” Meersman explains, “so the longer it is, the more panels it has.”

Usually, mowing about once a week is sufficient. In drier, warmer months like July and August, Meersman sometimes mows his lawn only once a month. “He definitely doesn’t want the stress of a haircut,” he says.

Aspinall adds that it’s important to stick to a routine and not let the grass get too long before you cut it. “You have to cut the grass consistently to train it to the height you want it to be,” he says. “It’s like a putting green. You can’t cut a putting green once every three days and expect it to be a good product.”

Your specific mowing routine will take some trial and error and will vary throughout the season. Find the frequency you need to keep your lawn around three inches.

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While Meersman says you don’t need to follow a strict and frequent aeration schedule like you do on golf courses, you should still aerate your lawn every two years. This helps loosen the soil and create channels for even water distribution, which helps maintain the health of the grass. “I call it beating up the cushion,” he says. “It relaxes the soil a little bit.” You probably don’t have access to the large aeration machines used on courses, but smaller versions you can rent from hardware stores do a pretty good job, Meersman says.