FARGO — Rick Dauner has been the superintendent at Village Green Golf Course in Moorhead since 1990. Jason Spitzner has held the same job at Edgewood Golf Course in Fargo for the last 25 years. Even the veteran masters of grass felt helpless this spring.
Murphy’s “what can go wrong” law threw superintendents a massive curve ball and no course private or public has been spared. It’s a matter as to what degree.
The problem: A lack of snow over the winter combined with colder temperatures in early April turned normally vibrant fairway grass into dotted brown blotches. Add to that a dry fall and no real soaking rains this spring has only added to the problem.
The biggest culprit is Poa grass, which takes advantage of prime growing conditions in the Red River Valley in most years.
“But it’s really unpredictable,” Spitzner said. “Some years it can be great and other years it can decide, you know what, I’m going to be done. It has nothing to do with any management, it’s just the way the grass is.”
It was mostly about poor timing. A brief snow melting spell in March started the process of the Poa coming out of its winter hibernation. But a snowstorm on April 2 changed everything, Dauner said.
“Before that last snow hit, this place looked perfect,” he said. “Then we had that deep frost on top of it so nothing ever dried out. The frost kept coming up and it just didn’t have a chance.”
Said Spitzner: “It kind of got moisture through the surfaces and then it got cold again. That really put it back. We never really had any kind of warm temps when the grass was trying to get going.”
Recent warm days helped some of the areas perk up, Spitzner said, but he really won’t know the total damage for another couple of weeks. If some areas haven’t returned to health by Memorial Day weekend, his crew will begin overseeding.
“A lot of us have older grass varieties that tend to not handle the winters,” Spitzner said. “They don’t handle stress as well as some of the newer varieties that as we overseed we’re starting to put out there.”
He’s been in the golf course business for 33 years, and normally turf problems at Edgewood have more to do with flooding than anything else.
“For not having a flood, this definitely is the most issues we’ve had with some turf,” Spitzner said.
Dauner has been at it for 36 years, and this spring takes the cake for the worst he’s seen. Add to that ice damage to the greens that added another headache, although he said those are quickly coming back.
The normally-vibrant Poa grass that turns a plush green in most years did not cooperate at area golf courses this spring.
Rob Beer / The Forum
The good news with Poa, he said, is it produces mass seed heads that are waiting to germinate.
“I was just out there today and I would say 75% of it is already re-germinating,” he said. “The next two weeks will be huge as long as this heat and wind doesn’t dry everything out.”
The grass wasn’t an issue with a lack of snow last winter primarily because the temperatures were above average.
“Just patience,” Dauner said. “It’s coming back and every day it looks better.”
Jeff would like to dispel the notion he was around when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, but he is on his third decade of reporting with Forum Communications. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, and the brother of a reporter, Jeff has worked at the Jamestown Sun, Bismarck Tribune and since 1990 The Forum, where he’s covered North Dakota State athletics since 1995.
Jeff has covered all nine of NDSU’s Division I FCS national football titles and has written three books: “Horns Up,” “North Dakota Tough” and “Covid Kids.” He is the radio host of “The Golf Show with Jeff Kolpack” April through August.
