Except for TifEagle putting greens, all the playing surfaces at Bluejack National — the first Tiger Woods-designed golf course in the United States — will be grassed with Zeon Zoysia and L1F Zoysiagrass, two of The Turfgrass Group’s premier varieties. An article published online by Club and Resort Business details the reasoning behind the grass selection for the course, which is scheduled to open this fall.
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Bluejack National Plants Zoysiagrass
By Brandi Shaffer | December 4th, 2014
All surfaces of Tiger Woods’ Montgomery, Texas golf course will be planted with two varieties of zoysiagrass, with the exception of the green surfaces, which will be TifEagle bermudagrass.
Grassing gets underway this month in Montgomery, Texas at Bluejack National, on the first Tiger Woods-designed golf course scheduled to open in the U.S. All surfaces of the 18-hole golf course will be planted with two varieties of zoysiagrass, Zeon Zoysia and L1F Zoysia, with the exception of the greens surfaces, which will be grassed with TifEagle bermudagrass.
Director of Agronomy Eric Bauer said the fairways at Bluejack National are being sodded with Zeon Zoysia. The course will have no rough, Bauer says, because “the designer and the developer want golf to be more enjoyable and to increase the pace of play. We’re blanketing the entire fairway playing area with Zeon Zoysia. Tee tops and green surrounds are L1F Zoysia, a new variety that can tolerate lower mowing heights. It will allow us to take the height down shorter. This is based on the desires of the Tiger Woods design team to create a lot of different shot options.”
The team is sodding a total of 97 acres with the intention of having the 18-hole golf course grown-in and ready for play by the fall of 2015. The developer, Beacon Land Development, decided to sod the zoysiagrass, Bauer said, rather than sprig it because “we were tied to a residential component. It was more important to open next year, which sodding allows, rather than sprig and wait another year to open.”
Zoysiagrass varieties, such as Zeon Zoysia and L1F Zoysia, are known to require less water and less fertilizer than bermudagrass, a family of warm-season grasses widely used on golf courses. Along with zoysiagrasses’ lower input demands, another deciding factor in the selection of Zeon Zoysia and L1F Zoysia at Bluejack National, Bauer said, was their “shade tolerance. We kept a lot of significant trees. The course is severely wooded.”
The sodding of the golf course will require 520 truckloads of grass, equaling 4.2 million sq. ft. of sod in the form of big rolls and slabs.