TURF: Main TURF quality differences between football and golf courses

Keys2MyCrops TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJXFTFAFmqI

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– To my eyes the football and golf courses are similar. Is that true or there are some differences in sense of turf quality or some other let’s say pre-pre-requisites between the two of them?

– It’s totally different.

Totally different?

Yes, I would say yes. The sport is totally different, the ball is much bigger in football compared to the golf ball and you can imagine that the mowing height is totally different. What do you think is the mowing height of a football pitch, like a Bundesliga football pitch or the pitch in Spain and the UK, Christos what do you think?

I have to think a little bit.

I will give you a hint. We are talking about centimeters.

Probably in football because we have a lot of traffic on that, it is denser than the golf courses.

No wrong you failed you have another chance no come on I will help you.

You have different species in golf courses.

Exactly, a totally different species, you need a deeper mowing height on a golf course. You are not mowing in centimeters, you are mowing in millimeters. Three millimeters on a golf green or below three millimeters and on a football pitch you’re mowing two centimeters 2.5 centimeters round about that. So, this is totally different. You have totally different turf or grass varieties. Normally in football systems, you are dealing with ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass and on golf greens normally you have the band glass, which is very dense, 200000 stems per square meter, so it’s very dense, compared to 40000 on a football pitch, for example. So, this is different, the soil is a little bit different, normally, in football stadiums, for example, you have no wind circulation and this is a very important issue. So, a lot of fungal diseases are feeling very well in these non-circulated areas, you have a lot of shadow because of the high building and all these abiotic stress factors are influencing of course the turf and this is what you have to take into account in your greenkeeping concept So that’s why it’s a little bit different yeah. But in the end, it’s a challenge for you to keep a high-quality turf independent from a football or a golf course the requirements are very high.

You know through the television we have different pictures, we have different ideas about the quality of the turf in the northern climates and the south of them and you are a global manager and you have global experience or experience all over the world, so can you please give us a distinction between the differences between north and south climate, on turf bases I mean?

Yeah, we are talking about plants, yes and you have to know that we are using different turf species in the south or in the north. Normally in the south area, we are using the so-called warm-season grasses. They have a different metabolic system compared to the cool-season grasses which we are using in the northern part of Europe for example and these different turf species are requiring different factors. So that’s why the maintenance is a little bit different, but what the greenkeepers from the north for example can learn from the greenkeepers from the south is, for example, the drought tolerance we are in a phase where we have climate-changing effects, global warming, so a main abiotic stress factor for the turf, also in northern Europe, is the heat and the drought and the UV radiation and the greenkeepers from the South, from California, from Florida or from Asia are used to these high temperatures and they have their experiences in supporting the turf in these uncomfortable conditions. So this is what the north greenkeepers maybe can learn or they can participate in the experiences of the south greenkeepers. That’s a very important problem, the drought tolerance, the question of how can we save water in the future and what can the greenkeeper do to create a kind of conditioning for the turf, to prepare the turf for these abiotic stress factors?