Anybody and everybody who knows how to grow grass on a golf course agrees on one thing: The East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, where the Tour Championship will start tomorrow, has been hit by a perfect storm that has caused severe problems with the greens. At the same time, there's also a deeper problem, rooted in the fact that bent grass was never meant to be a hot-weather grass.
The perfect storm consists of a few factors that have kept the bent from growing and made the greens wilt and all but die. The situation is so critical that players were not allowed to practice on any greens on Monday. They weren't allowed on the second, 13th and 15th greens yesterday, nor will they be today. The pro-am scheduled for yesterday was cancelled and no spectators will be allowed on the property until the tournament starts tomorrow.
Ken Mangum, the superintendent of the Atlanta Athletic Club, which also uses bent grass on its two courses, said in a telephone interview yesterday that before this week, Atlanta had 29 consecutive days of daytime temperatures that averaged 10 F above normal. Nights were 5 F above normal. The heat stressed the bent, which is meant to be a cool-weather grass, beyond its breaking point.
The PGA Tour has to be beside itself, given that it's been publicizing this FedEx Cup finale all year. Tiger Woods said he's never heard of players being kept off a course during practice rounds. Robert Allenby used the term "Mickey Mouse" to describe the situation.
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The persistence of the heat more than the temperatures has exacerbated the issue, Mangum said. Superintendents trying to manage bent in hot climates can usually do so with intensive water and fungicide applications and the aeration of greens. But the grass normally gets some relief from the heat during the evenings, except, of course, in hot and humid places such as Florida during the summer. Bent doesn't thrive in Florida, although some courses have tried and failed to keep it on their greens.
"The duration of the heat has been the biggest problem," Mangum said. Asked why the greens at the Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., were fine during the PGA Championship last month, when daily temperatures reached 40 C, Mangum said the weather was relatively mild until the week of the tournament.
"You also have to look at the microclimate at East Lake," Mangum explained. "The course is in the city, and it retains the heat from the concrete and asphalt. There's also very little air movement there. The other thing is that Southern Hills used 30 big fans to cool their greens."
East Lake brought fans in too late, and even then, not the big fans. Another influence, Mangum said, is the orientation toward the sun of many of East Lake's greens.
"The worst greens, 2, 10, 11, 13 and 15, are all angled to the afternoon sun," said Mangum, who was at East Lake yesterday morning.
Mangum declined to blame East Lake superintendent Ralph Kepple for the problems.
The poor guy has been taking the heat more than anybody, so much so that the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America took the perhaps unprecedented step of issuing a statement yesterday to support him. Kepple told The Golf Channel, "In the real world, we're dealing with Mother Nature."
Mangum, meanwhile, added, "If I were on a witch hunt, I think you have to go above the club."
Mangum meant the PGA Tour. The Tour Championship has been held at East Lake six of the past nine years, always in late October or early November. The PGA Tour was rolling the dice by moving its FedEx Cup-ending event into summer, even late summer. Many players, including Woods and Phil Mickelson, also wanted a shorter season.
The tournament should never have been scheduled on bent at East Lake at this time of the year. Common sense says so. Common sense has finally prevailed, in that the PGA Tour and East Lake have reached an agreement that will have the club changing its greens to heat-tolerant Bermuda grass for next year's tournament.
That won't help this week's FedEx Cup, which has pretty well turned into the FedEx Fiasco. Still, the greens would be even worse had the various decisions to restrict play and access this week not been made.
This isn't a Greek tragedy, but the PGA Tour, and its players, might well be suffering from hubris. Two words say it all: selfishness and greed.
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On the tee
PGA TOUR
Tour Championship
Site: Atlanta.
Schedule: Tomorrow through Sunday.
Course: East Lake Golf Club (7,154 yards, par 70).
Purse: $7-million (all currency U.S)
Winner's share: $1.26-million.
LPGA TOUR/LADIES EUROPEAN TOUR
Solheim Cup
Site: Halmstad, Sweden.
Schedule: Friday through Sunday.
Course: Halmstad Golf Club (6,615 yards, par 72).
CHAMPIONS TOUR
Greater Hickory Classic
Site: Conover, N.C.
Schedule: Friday through Sunday.
Course: Rock Barn Golf and Spa (7,090 yards, par 72).
Purse: $1.6-million.
Winner's share: $240,000.
Canadians: Rod Spittle.
PGA EUROPEAN TOUR
Mercedes-Benz Championship
Site: Pulheim, Germany.
Schedule: Tomorrow through Sunday.
Course: Gut Larchenhof Golf Club (7,289 yards, par 72).
Purse: $2.76-million.
Winner's share: $441,520.
NATIONWIDE TOUR
Oregon Classic
Site: Junction City, Ore.
Schedule: Tomorrow through Sunday.
Course: Shadow Hills Country Club (7,007 yards, par 72).
Purse: $475,000.
Winner's share: $85,500.
Canadians: Chris Baryla, Brad Fritsch, David Hearn, Ian Leggatt, Jon Mills, David Morland IV, Bryn Parry.
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