Westmoor CC, in tune with Mother Nature

I wanted to focus a story on this picture from Westmoor CC near Milwaukee, WI. Course superintendent Jerry Kershasky obviously has his course dialed in tune with its natural surroundings.


This shot was taken just over a year after the major restorations completed by TDI Golf and overseen by golf architecture firm Lohmann Golf Design. As you can see some native grasses have already appeared in the pond which appear to attract the waterfowl. As this restoration keeps maturing, all new construction details slightly obvious after construction will blend in and really soon, if not already, Westmoor CC will look more and more like the original Tom Bendelow layout from the old days.

This par 3 hole was one of the four rebuilds that were done to match the rest of the courses original pushup soil greens. Jerry had been topdressing over his 30 year tenure with a material that matched up with a 70:20:10 greensmix to the point that 4-5" of all the old greens had this great material near the surface. Jerry suggested to me that we use the 70:20:10 as backfill for all the XGD greens as well as using it for the greensmix for the new greens. This material is percing around 7"/hour and is slightly above our XGD specs for this operation, as we normally use a heavier material so the subsurface greens drainage laterals are not visible.

So, initially I was reluctant to approve it on the greens drainage backfill, but thought it would make a great greensmix. As I mulled it over some more I thought about the gas and regrass to a new bentgrass variety and recalled how rarely our XGD drainage laterals show up in mostly pure bentgrass stands anyway and approved the mix for both the new greens and the XGD backfill. The new greens were built with a 12" cavity for the subgrade. Once subgrade was approved we installed our system 4-8" deep in the subgrade and backfilled with the 70:20:10 mix, and the next step was to push the 12" of matching greensmix over the entire greens cavity and presto we have an XGD Modified Green matching similarily with the rest of Jerry's pushups in terms of agronomic management and playability.

The turf management staff in phlace at Westmoor is second to none and congratulations to them on a successful grow-in and the resulting two years thereafter are exhibiting some of the finest playing conditions in the Milwaukee area.

Regards, Poor Old Dirt & Grass Farmer

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