Molly McMulligan’s FAB 5

Bullet points for golfers in a Colorado drought 

Whatever the trials and tribulations of your golf game this season, no one has had it worse than Colorado’s golf course superintendents. Charged with preparing and protecting their fairways and greens under drought-induced water restrictions, they’re appealing to us to help.

“Obviously, every superintendent wishes their course could always be in great playing condition, but this is certainly a challenging year.,” says Mitch Savage, director of agronomy at the CGA’s CommonGround. “It’s going to test the skills of superintendents, and I think it's going to test the patience and acceptance and understanding of golfers too.”
Here are five ways we can help.

Adjust your expectations. The across-the-board, drastic measure of the summer has been for golf courses to sacrifice the edges of the course to preserve tees, greens and key parts of the fairways. So you’ll notice brown at the driving range, on the outside of the rough working in to the fairways and also on the short sides of the fairways that are typically not in play. The mid-July heat wave extended the brown even deeper into fairways. Says Savage, “Even courses that aren't under water restrictions, like us, are going to have brown in the fairways and the rough and in some spots.” That brown’s got a silver lining – with all the extra roll, we can club down!

Wheels up! Keep all four cart wheels on pavement where it exists, especially in areas around greens and tees where players frequently put a couple wheels on the grass. Some courses are requiring carts stay on paths, others may ask us to keep carts in fairways and out of rough. If you’re fit, how about walking, using a pushcart or voluntarily observing cart-path-only? Courses that do not have tee-to-green cart paths may have other suggestions. “We don't have cart paths all the way around our golf courses, so we can’t go to cart-path-only,” says Scott Rethlake, who oversees the seven courses of Denver Golf. “We could say, stay in the fairway only, don’t go in the rough. But we just decided to let people go where they go, disperse, not direct them to certain areas because then you’ll definitely wear out those areas.”

Go for the green – any green grass. Whether walking, pushing a cart or driving one,  generally skirt brown areas and stick to the green ones. “All it takes is one golf cart to drive over a really dry patch of turf and it leaves tracks like it does if you drive through frost. On severely dry turf, you can see the tire tracks for a week or two afterwards,” says Mitch. Playing recreational, fun golf? Consider moving your ball from that brown patch in the fairway to a nearby spot that’s green – no closer to the hole, of course! “Hit off some nice green turf as opposed to a piece of hard pan rock,” he says. “Nobody wants to break their wrists.”
Do some homework. Players bound and determined not to play the courses that have it worst – those faced with mandatory water cuts of 10, 15, 20 or even 30 percent – should call ahead and check conditions. These can vary within a given district – CommonGround and City Park, for instance, use reclaimed water and can be expected to have more greenery than, say, neighbors Aurora Hills,  Murphy Creek or Kennedy. (For more details on the range of conditions and restrictions in Colorado, see A Closer Look in the August CGA Monthly.)

But remember that brown grass beats the alternative, NO grass. The courses are busting out every trick in their caddy shacks to ensure that the grass lives to cushion us for another season. Savage says a tried and true technique is to raise the mow height, which may make the fairways look a bit shaggier than usual. For the Aurora public courses, says manager of marketing and communications Ted Bryant, “The aesthetics aren’t really a priority. We’re just trying to keep the courses alive.” Rethlake points out that our grass turns brown every winter because it’s dormant, but says, “The real danger is that either through traffic or extended drought, the crown of the plant gets damaged and dies and then you don't have grass that will come back when you do have water. That's what we're trying to minimize with the golfers’ help, to not kill it so it will come back next year.”


Veteran journalist Susan Fornoff has written about golf for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, ColoradoBiz magazine and her own GottaGoGolf.com. She provides the voice of “Molly McMulligan,” the CGA’s on-course consultant on golf for fun. Mr. McMulligan, Keith DuBay, is also an accomplished journalist and especially enjoys reviewing golf courses. Email the McMulligans at mollymcmulligan@gmail.com. 
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