"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

September 3, 2002

The pattern has become all too familiar at Bear Trace.

"We have a great spring, every year," said head professional Robin Boyer. "Toward the end of June, the greens start thinning out. By July, we’re scratching our heads."

And golfers stay away in droves.

Bear Trace, designed by Jack Nicklaus’ design firm, has been universally praised as one of the best layouts in Chattanooga. Area golfers, and some who travel across the state and even the South, enjoy the course’s challenges. Nicklaus Design calls it the "crown jewel" of the five Bear Trace courses in Tennessee. But come the heat of summer, the greens give way to the heat, shutting down play to a mere trickle.

Clearly, this problem has confounded Redstone Golf Management of Houston, which runs the Bear Trace courses while leasing the land from the state. Finally, after three years of patchwork on the greens, Redstone is attempting to find a more permanent solution. The trouble is, the solution might be costly.

It has become painfully obvious that shortcuts were taken in the course’s construction. Exactly who is to blame for those shortcuts is unclear. Suffice to say no one is stepping up to take responsibility.

Recently, two members of the Nicklaus Design team, including its regional agronomist and a course architect, gave Bear Trace the once over. What they found was not pretty.

Without getting too technical, several problems have led to the demise of Bear Trace’s greens. The major problem was poor construction; the greens simply were not built to USGA specifications. That has led to drainage problems, and in the heat of the "transition zone," in which Chattanooga is located, preserving bent grass greens with poor drainage is next to impossible.

Already, the course has rebuilt Nos. 1, 5 and 16 greens, which corrected the drainage problem. Ironically though, those greens have fallen victim to another problem—poor sod that was thick with silt that wouldn’t allow water to penetrate the root system. That same sod, bought from the same company, doomed the greens at Nicklaus’ pride and joy, Muirfield Village.

At Muirfield, where money is no object, the solution is simple. They’re rebuilding the greens. That might not be so easy to do at Bear Trace.

There are other problems that might be unique to the Bear Trace. Around some greens, trees block wind circulation. The answer would be to cut down some trees to allow wind to sweep through the green areas, but because the surrounding land is owned by TVA, that’s not possible.

The solution would be the construction of large fans around the green. Most of the better courses in Chattanooga have installed them to do what Mother Nature can’t. If air doesn’t circulate properly, the greens retain too much moisture. In the heat, the roots of bent grass can literally boil.

So what to do at Bear Trace? The team that toured the site hasn’t yet made a recommendation. But clearly, the best way to solve the problem is to rebuild the greens to USGA specs and install fans around greens where trees can’t be cleared. The problem is the cost. Plus, the course would have to be closed, leading to lost revenue.

Apparently, the Nicklaus team has discounted the use of bermuda grass instead of bent, reasoning that the surface might be too hard to accept certain shots on greens that require a forced carry on the approach. And changing the grass on the greens wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem.

Redstone is currently addressing other problems on the course. Fescue rough, which dies out every year, is slowly being replaced by bermuda. And 20 of the course’s bunkers have been rebuilt because of poor drainage, with another 20 to go.

Clearly, someone has a major decision to make when it comes to Bear Trace. But if the problem is fixed, the golf community will embrace the golf course, just as it does every spring, before the heat ruins the greens.

"We’ve found that people will pay any reasonable price to play a quality golf course," Boyer said. "But the product has to be good. We’ve gotten so many calls and e-mails telling us that we’ve got a great layout, but asking when we’re going to do something about the greens."

That time has come.

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