It Ain't Easy Being Green

By Bryan Fazio
The Valdosta Daily Times

April 18, 2008 01:32 am

— VALDOSTA — Kinderlou Forest Golf Course is once again ready for the Nationwide Tour’s finest golfers.
Golf Course Superintendent Steve Singley and his crew have been working to prepare the fairways, greens, roughs and tee boxes for four months in anticipation of the South Georgia Classic held April 28-May 4. The tournament brings the Nationwide Tour’s top golfers chasing a purse of $625,000 with a winner’s share of $112,500.
“The golf course is ready to be played right now as far as I’m concerned,” Singley said.
Last year’s inaugural tournament received good reviews from the professional golfers and tour officials, allowing Singley to build on the success.
The greens, which were above the tour’s average speeds are being maintained the same way, but the rest of the course has been lowered, and the rough has been increased.
With Kinderlou being touted as the longest course on the PGA Tour, it was shortened by green speeds that were up to 13 on the Stimp scale, used to measure how far the ball rolls.
Kinderlou’s greens normally are set at a nine on the scale, but for the South Georgia Classic the speed is increased significantly.
“Last year players were very complimentary, and very pleased about the greens’ speed,” Singley said.
Singley has gone back to quickening the greens, and starting Wednesday will mow them once in the morning, once in the afternoon and then roll them and adding plenty of water to firm them up.
While the green speed helped with the long course, PGA officials noted that there wasn’t as much rough as they would have preferred, which was negated by the course length.
However, this year there is longer and wider rough thanks to a diligent fertility program put in place by Singley.
Starting before the winter the Kinderlou crew put iron down on the course, to help with color and growth, and four weeks ago started adding ammonium sulfate and plenty of water.
Singley was thrown off by the recent cold snap, but has his crew right back to adding fertility to the rough.
“We were a little concerned about these last few cool nights,” Singley said. “We had a little frost, which you are always concerned when you’re trying to push the grass to get it to grow.”
However once the warm weather came back into the forecast the grounds crew started pushing more fertility adding the ammonium sulfate, working on the bunkers and restricting cart access.
“We’ve been working things all winter long, ornamental beds, draining and things like that,” Singley said. “When the warm weather started, that’s when we really got after it.”
Kinderlou has some added ornamental beds on hole No. 4 and No. 7 to reduce golfers cutting across for less shots.
“We added a lot of ornamental beds to play the holes the way their supposed to be played,” Singley said. “You can’t take shortcuts. They did some on No. 4, Par-5, the longest hole on the golf course, and they were picking it apart.”
Singley has also added more nitrogen to both to fertilize and green up the course for its Golf Channel debut.
“Last year we put 2 1/2 pounds of nitrogen on the golf course, and we’re on track to put down five pounds this year.”
The added attention of national television has helped put the course on track for another beautiful tournament, with the PGA Tour’s agronomist commenting that Kinderlou is ahead of schedule from last year.

The tournament is less than 20 days away, and the South Georgia Classic is still in need of volunteers, for volunteer and ticket information call the Tournament Office at (229) 242-8455.

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