How we used Toro Lynx's Instant Programs...

To save water and maximize playing conditions

Our Toro Lynx central control computer has about 25 programs on it. It seems like a lot to me, but maybe others have just as many, or more; I don’t know. What I do know, is when I visit another facility, I often take a look at their programs, just to see how they might be using their central controller. The longer I’ve been a superintendent, the more I have come to realize, more programs allow for better control of water, which allows for better/drier playing conditions. 

In his book Turn the Ship Around, formal Naval commander David Marquet writes about giving decision making capabilities to those possessing the subject matter knowledge. It’s a wonderful book and I highly recommend reading it. Marquet says that while he allows his crew to make many decisions, the most consequential decisions will always be made by him. I think of my role as golf course superintendent in much the same way. There are certain decisions, such as application recipes and irrigation timing, in which I will always have the final say. When compared to David Marquet’s decisions on a nuclear submarine, my decisions seem inconsequential, but when it comes to the quality and playing conditions of the golf course, such decisions are paramount and thus I retain the final say. Irrigation is one such decision and my programs are a big part of how myself and the team provide the best possible conditions. 

Our central controller has the usual programs, greens, tees, fairways, rough, practice tees, clubhouse, etc. Then we go deeper, we have a second and third greens program to run multiple starts with differing run times. There are programs for dry tees, and par three tees. On fairways we have a dry fairways 1 and dry fairways 2 programs for differing thresholds, and there are also programs for the center heads and the outside heads. Of course Lynx makes creating programs much easier, but even when we were running Site Pro, I created and used a lot of programs; it just took more time.

On fairways, it’s very rare that we’ll run the entire fairway program on any given night. Usually the full program is reserved for watering in wetting agents. When we start to dry out, the areas covered by the dry fairway 1 program are those that require irrigation first. Once it becomes necessary, I’ll run this program, usually from 6-8 minutes per night, usually every night. As we continue to dry, the dry fairway 2 program will be the next program I turn on, with runtimes and frequencies being the same. 

The last two summers in the Twin Cities have been droughty and we often went long periods of time without rain. In such cases, we found the areas in the dry programs, which were getting maybe ¾ more water than non-dry program heads, were disproportionately wet. When going through extended dry periods, we found it more useful to alternate between the center line program and the outside head programs; running each program about 8 minutes one night and the other program the next night. During dry periods, this does a better job of keeping consistent conditions from edge to edge. 

On tees, we typically alternate between two programs–one watering all of the boxes, another watering only those deemed to be dry and thus on the dry program. The tees on the dry program, during dry portions of the summer often need to be watered every day. The tees on the other program need less water, so breaking out the programs in this way keeps us from over-watering some in order to keep up with all. 

We are not afraid to use over-head irrigation on putting greens. Our team will typically check moisture and hand-water in the morning. Based on this check, and further afternoon checks, they will then come up with recommendations for run times on specific greens. When the greens are experiencing some moisture stress, we like to run a quick program as soon as the sun goes down. This gives the turf a little bit of water right at sunset to help it recover from any stress incurred during the day. We use a specific program for this sundown watering, then use a different program to run any heavier amounts the team has decided the greens require.

This is a watering routine we’ve used on greens for the past few seasons and it helps us provide high quality surfaces every day.   

In the fall, we can often be quite dry and the only areas that need irrigation are where the trees are close to fairways. We do not have a lot of these areas, but it’s handy to be able to water only these heads during the autumn months, so we have a program to water just the tree-lined areas of fairways.

As many of you will know, Toro’s Lynx central control makes creating programs a breeze. We make programs for seeding and programs to water bunkers. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize we probably don’t have enough programs.