Growing the Game
By Rick Young, SCOREGOLF Magazine
Created: August 14, 2019
Maintaining golf courses is a difficult job, but one made easier thanks to the important work and research being done at the Guelph Turfgrass Institute.
Various species of grass are grown and tested at the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, a place that’s vital to Canadian golf.
What strikes you first is how out-of-place it appears. A beautifully landscaped sod farm is not something you expect to see on a university campus, even if it is the University of Guelph, reputed globally for its food and agricultural programming. Such a large buffer of ruralness amid an expanse of urban sprawl sticks out like a sore, no, green thumb against the surrounding Royal City landscape. It can leave an odd first impression.
More puzzling is to find out that sod for your lawn isn’t even for sale here. Neither are fruit, vegetables or plants of any kind.
What this University of Guelph ‘farm’ produces is data. What it cultivates is information specific to turfgrass science and management with a high priority on environmental sustainability and future enhancement. Specific to the golf industry, what the Guelph Turfgrass Institute (GTI) harvests is research.
“Every day we play golf on plants, living organisms that must be cared for,” said Dr. Eric Lyons, associate professor and director of GTI. “Courses need to grow in a way golfers find aesthetically pleasing so they’re willing to pay a fee to play the end product. They also have to grow in a sustainable way. GTI is a conduit to striking that balance.”
Supported by the University of Guelph, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Canadian turfgrass industry, the Guelph Turfgrass Institute is internationally renowned.
A rendering of Guelph Turfgrass Institute 2.0. The state-of-the-art facility will further help the golf industry with turf research and testing.
Not only is it widely respected as a world-class hub for turfgrass and sports field research, it exists to provide the educational platform necessary to graduate future generations of golf course superintendents and turfgrass specialists. It serves the golf industry specifically as a science-based conduit for biological and cultural control of diseases and weeds, pesticide protocols, grass species evaluations and seeding methods. It accomplishes all of this while staying true to the University of Guelph’s simple yet visionary mission statement: ‘To Improve Life.’
“This place is an idea. The Guelph Turfgrass Institute is a concept that allows people who have expertise in a number of areas to service golf through research,” Lyons said of the facility’s mandate. “All of us come here — soil scientists, pollination biologists, environmentalists — and if we have a research question that applies to the game and to the industry, we have a place, a home through GTI, to disseminate that information.”
Unlike the United States Golf Association’s (USGA) green section and its ongoing support of turfgrass science (every state across America has its own standalone turfgrass research and testing facility), the Canadian golf industry must rely almost exclusively on GTI to conduct research on its behalf.
When issues arise like they did in 2014, when dozens of courses across Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes faced dead Poa annua greens and fairways from late winter/early spring ice build-up, Guelph Turfgrass Institute was pressed into service. It lent its expertise to superintendents facing devastating circumstances before engaging in follow-up research to help avoid future problems.
Needless to say, GTI’s phone number is one most superintendents across the country keep in their list of contacts. “Ninety per cent of the graduates from our two-year University of Guelph diploma program wind up going into the golf industry,” said Cameron Shaw, GTI’s outreach and communications coordinator. “Many of the top superintendents in Canada have been through the course here.”
Some have even come full circle. Cutten Fields’ Bill Green, a Class ‘A’ Ontario Golf Superintendent Association member, who graduated from both the University of Guelph and Penn State University, stays connected to GTI every day beyond his alumnus status. The Stanley Thompson-designed Cutten Fields runs adjacent to Guelph Turfgrass Institute’s brand new location and plot test facility. Last fall, in his role as site manager, Green was entrusted with the grow-in of five-and-a-half acres of Poa annua, bentgrass and other turf varieties that comprise GTI’s primary research plots.In the world of turfgrass it was like overseeing the maturation of a top-five golf course in the world.
“I’ve had superintendents from all over Ontario and even across Canada come here to see the different species of grasses we have on site. GTI is an educational resource for the game. People honestly don’t know what’s going on here or what the place even does but it’s critical to golf in Canada,” Green explained.
On a walking tour of the neatly manicured test site, Green explained just how critical. He motioned towards a group of researchers conducting field testing on bio-solids. Earlier, Lyons and Shaw pointed out plots where research and analysis was being done on more drought tolerant fescues and fine fescue blends. GTI even has a sloped plot used to measure run off. Dozens of turf-related, student and faculty initiated test projects are being conducted simultaneously too.
The fact GTI even exists is a testament to the vision of numerous individuals. People like Mac and Beth Frost, whom the G.M. Frost Research and Information Centre is named after, Ron Craig, Norm McCollum and countless others connected to the University of Guelph. They are individuals not widely known beyond their immediate sphere of turfgrass influence but their service to the game in this country deserves recognition.
Like Lyons, Shaw and Green do today, those trailblazers and supporters of GTI understood the value of turfgrass research.
“Before I came here I always thought golf courses were bad for pollinators, that they hurt bees. Talk to a pollination biologist and they’ll tell you just the opposite, that they’re great, that native pollinators need that grassland. Plants have a lot of power to do good in our urban environment. Institutes like this one help us to truly understand how a golf course functions,” Lyons added.
Thirty years after it was found-ed, Guelph Turfgrass Institute 2.0 is taking shape. With an expiring lease on land owned by the province and re-zoned by the City of Guelph for real estate development, the transition to a new facility, located on University of Guelph land next to Cutten Fields, has been challenging but rewarding.
Along with the five-plus acres of research plots, two storm retention ponds, test greens and trial gardens, the next generation of the GTI will be home to a brand new G.M. Frost Centre teaching and outreach facility. Not only do the stakeholders promise that it will be state-of-the-art in every detail, the re-envisioned infrastructure of GTI 2.0 sets the University of Guelph turfgrass facility and program up for long-term viability.That, in a present sense, is significant. In the last four years scrutiny from the public and government regulatory agencies has removed important tools superintendents use to manage their facilities, particularly in the area of pesticides. As those tools go away the only way new products can be brought to market to replace them is through the collection of data gathered in Canada.
“The golf industry is not a static entity,” Shaw explains.
“It’s constantly changing on the side of maintenance and it changes at an incredibly fast rate, so fast that research can’t keep up with it because research is a slow process. Our facility is one of very few with the necessary infrastructure to deliver that data.”
Rick Young is SCOREGolf's Business & Equipment Analyst.
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