Our older, more traditional golf courses have had difficulty competing with the newer, more modern builds in terms of turf quality and overall playing conditions. Imported turf grasses are biologically engineered to provide ideal playing conditions and are used in all corners of the golf course. The ball sits up nicely, the clubhead just knifes through the turf and the golf ball dances around the pin on the greens.
Perfection has a price and keeping turf grasses cloned brought in from other environments, that cost is usually quite high. By last estimates over P5 million a month for an 18-hole golf course, which includes labor, fertilizer, herbicides and other inputs. But is that always necessary?
Hacienda Luisita Golf and Country Club seems to be an outlier in the grand scheme of things. The club spends a fraction of that on the historic Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, something that has positively impacted the club’s bottom line.
Ahead of its time, Luisita has tifdwarf on its greens and although the fairways were originally Tifton, parts have been overtaken by zoysia and other indigenous grasses. All this hasn’t hurt playability in the slightest but does present different challenges as you stray from the fairways.
The most interesting thing about Luisita has been the stability of the tifdwarf greens. Most of the newer golf courses started with tifdwarf on their greens. Fil-Estate and Sta. Lucia leaned heavily on tifdwarf for their projects, but many have moved away from it while others still are planning to join the migration to the newer ultradwarf varieties that seem to tolerate our weather conditions more readily and because they can withstand lower cutting heights, provide quicker rolling greens and resist mutation.
In the face of that, Luisita’s greens have been remarkably stable and resistant to infestation. They are covered with the original grass that was planted back in 1968, 50 years ago. For greens that old, they roll remarkably well and remain very consistent year-round.
General Manager Jeric Hechanova and golf course superintendent Rey Patricio have hit on a very good balance in their maintenance routine that allows the greens to roll in the high nines almost year-round. They can speed them up significantly when the occasion demands it, but the greens like the routine that Patricio has established.
Occasional visitors and tourists appreciate this aspect of Luista more than most as the course is always in what seems to be peak playing condition just about any time they play. We had the slight misfortune to play just after the club had hosted three straight professional tournaments and just aerated the greens on the inward nine. There was just the slightest bit of sand on the greens and they were just a bit bumpy. The level of regular intervention is minimal. Another two weeks and they’ll be perfect.
Speaking with Hechanova and Patricio, it’s apparent that they take a minimalist approach to the maintenance of their golf course. Patricio has an innate understanding of what the grasses require and is quite happy to simply support their growth cycles. His understanding of the golfers’ expectations when they arrive at the course helps synch his processes to provide the playing conditions golfers prefer. Besides his knowledge, he has the patience to allow nature to take its course and resist the urge to intervene with chemicals of one kind or other.
These practices and the results that they’ve produced bring into question the traditional methods used by other golf courses. The move to more sustainable practices and the need to reduce the cost of caring for and feeding a golf course resonate on every corner of the golf world except in the games most hallowed stages.
Golf course construction techniques that were championed in the infancy of the Philippine golf boom in the early 90s are now being called into question. Sand-capping was a must for golf courses constructed during this time frame. The practice allowed golf courses to drain quickly after a deluge but created other problems that were only evident in the mid and long terms. The speed with which the fairways drained made it difficult for the grasses to absorb nutrients and moisture since the golf course drained far too quickly, much quicker that it would naturally. This meant that golf courses needed to water more than they ever had before. Because the nutrients drained away with the excess water, more nutrients in the form of fertilizers and essential minerals had to be used to maintain the turf’s health. An unwelcome side effect was the speed with which organic matter built up in the substrate and over time worked to inhibit the golf course’s ability to drain. The increased amount of inputs was many golf courses’ undoing. More water, fertilizer and chemicals were used than was necessary, increasing costs and negatively impacting the bottom line.
Luisita is lucky in the respect that the golf course doesn’t have to deal with any of these issues. Could the traditional construction methods used at Luisita be the reason that the imported turf varieties have done so well there? Perhaps. More than likely, Wit was the proper care that was lavished on the grasses that enabled them not only to survive but to thrive.
Luisita didn’t always look this good. In the years just before Martin Lorenzo purchased the golf course from the Cojuangco family, the course did leave a little to be desired. The fairways were decent, but the greens were furry and Velcro slow. The lakes, once visible from the clubhouse had become obscured by vegetation and much of the golf course’s natural beauty was hidden from view. It wasn’t until Hechanova and Patricio arrived at Luisita that things turned around.
Working with Robert Trent Jones Jr., they set about restoring the golf course to how Jones Sr. originally intended. They realized that they also needed to toughen up the course a bit to deal with golf’s new power game. Jones Jr. identified several new tee boxes that not only lengthened the golf course but added difficulty by simply changing what the golfer sees off the tee. The new tee on 11 is a perfect example. They built the new tee back on the other side of the hazard behind the current tee box. Not only did they push it back, but the view of the fairway from the tee is set at an angle that changes the golfer’s perspective of the fairway, making it a much-tougher shot.
The golf course today is in the marvelous condition; the best it’s been in years. It has responded positively to the changes management has instituted over the last three years, which begs the question; has the golf course peaked under Lorenzo’s crew? Can it get better still?
Our opinion is that it has not peaked and it can get better still. A team like this is never content to rest on their laurels and will continue to find facets of the golf course that they can improve upon. It’s going to be fun to return in the years to come to see the course mature further for ourselves.
Image credits: Mike Besa