Cultural Management for Height Reduction of Tifgreen 328 Bermudagrass Greens

Abstract

Tifgreen bermudagrass (328) has been used for greens in the Southwest for 40 years. Decreased mowing heights desired for tournament events can result in loss of turf quality and performance. A series of mowing and rolling events were devised and executed on a Tifgreen turf mowed at 5/32", in order to minimize the potential negative affects of a reduced mowing height of 1/8". All treatments were executed prior to mowing the turf at the new reduced height of 1/8". Significant treatment effects resulted from combinations of mowing and rolling for ball speed distance, when averaged over three evaluation dates. When averaged over all three evaluation dates, the single mow/no roll treatment [1x mow/0 roll] had the least ball roll distance (BRD) values. Mowing/rolling combinations which resulted in either three or four operations on Day 1 (1x mow/2x roll, 2x mow/2x roll and 2x mow/1x roll) had slightly greater BRD values than the operations which included two operations (2x mow/0x roll and 1x mow/1x roll). BRD values decreased from Day 1, Day 2 and Day 4 from 81.2", 80.3" to 73.4", respectively when average over all treatments. Single mowing at 5/32", followed by either a double or single rolling event prior to mowing to the new height of 1/8" on Day 1, resulted in the longest BRD values for Days 1 and 2. The effect of all cultural management treatments was diminished by Day 4.