This PGA Tour course is stripping down some of the ‘best surfaces’ for new grass this summer

LA QUINTA, California — When the No. 1 men’s golfer in the world says your greens are among the best, it’s a compliment to be taken seriously.

“They may be some of the best surfaces I’ve ever seen,” Scottie Scheffler said last January of the greens at La Quinta Country Club, one of the three courses played in The American Express PGA Tour event. “They’re really, really good. That’s consistent. It’s been like that — I think this is my fourth time here at this event — and they have been like that every time I’ve been over there. It’s pretty amazing what that superintendent and the club can do with those greens.”

What Scheffler and the other golfers in The American Express might not have known last January was that the greens on the back nine of La Quinta Country Club had been stripped down and had new grass planted in the summer of 2022. That same process is taking place at the club this summer on the front nine, with superintendent Tim Putnam certain of the same results.

“If you look at the data, they were virtually identical, for the speed of the greens, the firmness of the greens, all that,” Putnam said of the back-nine greens from 2022 to 2023. “They were virtually identical.”

Putnam, approaching his 21st anniversary at La Quinta Country Club, said swapping out the tifdwarf Bermuda grass on the greens for basically the same kind of tifdwarf is needed to help the course and keep the greens receiving rave reviews from tour players.

“(Hybrid Bermuda grass) starts to mutate and revert back into its parent types, which were 328 (variety),” Putnam said. “And then you get a lot of contamination that comes in through various processes.”

Part of an overall project at the club

The process this summer includes stripping all of the grass from the putting surfaces, with the help of some herbicides.

What’s the secret to La Quinta Country Club’s pristine greens once compared to Augusta National’s?

“Then we come in and we punch a little bit, stir it up a little bit and we apply a little granular fumigant to it,” Putnam said.

The tifdwarf being replaced now has been on the course since 1999, the year of a major renovation to the La Quinta course. While Putnam says players in The American Express should see no difference in the putting surfaces next January, the obvious changes will be in the late spring, summer and fall.

“(The greens) were bad in the summer and the renovation part of the overseeding (the transition of grasses in the spring) was becoming difficult because of the different growth habits of the mutations and the contamination species in there,” Putnam said. “It made it very hard to get an even renovation on the greens. It was going to eventually start affecting the overseeding process.”

“Long-term health of the golf course is the priority here,” said Chris Gilley, head golf professional at La Quinta Country Club. “The great thing about La Quinta Country Club is that it has the reputation it is because of who has been running it, not because the tour is dictating it. The tour chooses to come back every year, which is great.”

Another part of the work at the course this year is the removal of 135 trees from the property, 125 of which were single date palms. Putnam said the trees were getting old and becoming a hazard.

“Just this year we lost six date palms during the season to wind events,” Putnam said. “They are breaking at what is called a drought ring. When a date palm is transplanted, it undergoes a shock from being pulled out of the ground and put into a new one. What happens is the trunk will get skinny, and then as it gets established it goes back to growing its normal width.”

A young ghost gum or Eucalyptus papuana tree is seen planted between the first and ninth holes with older date palm trees standing in the background at La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, Calif., Friday, June 23, 2023. The date palm trees are being phased out as a safety hazard since they are prone to wind damage and will be removed once the new trees are of substantial height in the next couple years. Photo: Andy Abeyta/Desert Sun/USA Today Network

The older trees become fragile at the drought ring and become a danger for breaking and falling. To replace the trees being taken out, La Quinta is planting 90 new trees, with varieties from eucalyptus to Chinese elm to mesquite.

“So it’s not like we are going to be changing the strategy of the golf course or anything,” Putnam said. “Some of the ones that were removed were at (the PGA Tour’s) request as well. And we still have more than 350 palm trees on the property.”

Putnam said while the PGA Tour doesn’t have approval rights to projects at La Quinta Country Club, the club takes its reputation for great greens seriously.

“It is definitely motivation,” Putnam said. “We’ve got to make sure that these greens are as good as they were last year. I don’t want to have a down year. You don’t want to hear, “What happened to these greens here?’ ”