Is there anything that can be done to stop pests and diseases on our courses?

We are all aware when pests and diseases strike our golf courses. We can see the damage for ourselves. But what we don’t often understand is how these issues dominate the lives of our greenkeeping teams and how the battle to keep our courses looking their best can be all consuming.

From detailed planning and predicting when diseases might strike, to trying to deal with pests in the face of ever tightening restrictions on chemical, teams must be vigilant and inventive.

For Your Course, produced by the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association, we spoke to three course managers from across the UK to understand what they are facing.

This week, we ask our trio what pests and diseases issues they are dealing with and the impact they are having on their turf.

Tackling those questions are Dan Kendle, Head Greenkeeper at Newquay, in Cornwall; Graham Ives, Course Manager at Waltham Windmill, in Lincolnshire; and Tim Johnson, Golf Course Superintendent at Dunham Forest in Cheshire.

What pests and diseases issues are you dealing with?

Dan: Dollar spot has been a big problem for us. We started seeing it about seven years ago, but it’s only in the last four or five years where it’s started to get worse. In 2017, we lost four fairways through leatherjacket damage, and in 2020 and 2021, we lost 25% grass coverage on three greens.

We were one of the clubs involved with Syngenta doing trials with Acelepryn. We were really bad. I’ve got photos on my phone when we were sheeting greens. Our 14th is a par 3, a relatively small green. We sheeted that overnight and we pulled up about 3,000 leatherjackets. We sheeted it again a week later and brought up the same amount. It was frightening.

As I said, we had a bad infestation in 2017 and lost all the fairways through the middle which sit on sand – from them eating roots and killing the grass.

Tim: Fusarium, anthracnose, take all patch, brown patch, we get a bit of everything. It’s quite high shade and the golf course almost has its own micro-climate because of the trees. You’re battling each one at different times of year.

Rightly, or wrongly, I don’t really worry about disease too much because we’ve got products that are quite good if you use them properly. Leatherjackets and worms are my biggest headaches. It’s the pecking and then the grubs eating the roots of the plant.

Graham: We’ve had leatherjackets and a bout of chafer grubs last year. This year, with disease, it’s mainly Microdochium patch – or fusarium.

What impact are they having on your turf?

Tim: We get pockmarked greens. There are the leatherjackets from below attacking the greens and attacking the roots. The plant doesn’t want to get going because it’s got no roots.

Greens are quite prone to being bobbly in spring anyway because you get inconsistent growth. Then you’ve got the birds coming from above battering the life out of your greens and trying to get those grubs out.

The playing surfaces are just struggling. You find your greens are a little bit behind where they need to be [coming into summer] because they can’t physically get the legs down to get moving. When they do, there is something coming in from above.

Graham: Obviously, it’s mainly pecking and they’re just wrecking the surface. But I’ve had massive improvements from using molasses and I haven’t suffered some of the mess and the damage other clubs have.

Dan: You’ve got the visual aspect of dollar spot, but it’s pitting as well. We’re in a unique situation with the climate. Dollar spot, historically, has been coming in around May but we’re still seeing it until November because we’re that much warmer.

In September three years ago, we had a big outbreak and the weather was completely against us. I couldn’t get out to spray a fungicide and we couldn’t put a feed out because it was wet and windy. We’re seeing more dewy mornings. Leaf moisture and temperature are the two biggest driving factors in dollar spot formation.

What, if anything, can you do about pests and diseases?

Graham: With pests, I trialled molasses – a sugar product – last year and we didn’t have any pecking or chafers in that area. I use it as a soil conditioner. The guy I get it off had been trialling it somewhere else and I went a little bit further.

There are a lot of golf clubs using it. They recommend 10 to 20 litres and I went on at 40 a hectare. It’s a sugar. It’s not going to hurt the sward and it worked. It stopped straight away.

With fusarium, my greens are USGA specification – so they are sand based. I was at an event and there were a couple of guys who had trialled their greens at a certain height all year round. That was 4mm. Our greens are pretty good in the winter, they train, so I thought I would trial it.

I spoke to the owner, who said if I could sustain the sward he didn’t mind. With the leaf being shorter in the winter, and I’m not taking the cut up, I found I had fewer severe dews. There was no shock between moving heights.

My sward is kept tight even during the winter and I think that has a lot to do with it. I also use dew-dispersing products that stay on the sward and keep the surface dry as much as possible.

I always feed every two weeks, even during the winter. For chafer grubs and leatherjackets, we bought a lot of moulded crows and we’ve had good success rate – shifting crows from pecking – by just hanging them in the trees. We emailed members to say, ‘don’t be startled’, because they look real.

Dan: Surface moisture, particularly overnight, is a big driver. We time our irrigation so it’s coming on and finishing just as we arrive for work. We’re trying to reduce moisture on the surface through irrigation. We can’t do so much about dew. I know there are dew suppressants but we haven’t really used those.

Rolling – using a green iron – is a big factor in reducing it and I’ve seen presentations by Dr Thomas Nikolai, at Michigan State University, who has done trials on rolling and its suppression of dollar spot.

We’re a small team of six but we’ll be rolling Monday to Friday. When staffing levels drop at a weekend I’ll come in on a Saturday morning. If you’ve got high disease pressure, dollar spot can arrive literally overnight.

Tim: Populations of grubs are higher now than they’ve ever been because we’ve lost the products we had. We’ve got Acelepryn. The products we used to have – nothing survived it.

No leatherjacket would survive anything you sprayed and it was easy to use perfectly. We only use Acelepryn on greens. You live and die by your greens so we concentrate on those.

This spring, because of the weather we’ve had, we haven’t had the level of recovery. It’s hit us harder this spring than any other. We’ve tried sheeting. They don’t like garlic so we use that and, on disease management, I’m trying to reduce annual meadowgrass in the greens, which notoriously has a very shallow root system.

If a leatherjacket is attacking those roots there’s really going to be nothing left. We’re trying to get more bent into the greens and eventually go down the fescue route.

• This article appears in Your Course, the twice-yearly publication from the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association. Your Course invites golfers to gain a deeper appreciation of what preparing and maintaining a golf course really involves. Head to www.bigga.org.uk to find out more.

Now have your say on golf course weather

What pests and disease issues have you seen on your golf course? Let us know by leaving a comment below or on X.

• NOW READ: What damage do chafer grubs cause to your golf course?

• NOW READ: Why do leatherjackets cause carnage on your golf course?