Golf Green Subsurface Drainage at Oakmont CC

Time to blow our horn again, but wanted to wax nostalgic on our association with Oakmont Country Club’s subsurface greens infrastructure.

As the picture on #18 green verifies XGD installed it’s trademarked version of internal subsurface greens drainage in the final eleven greens at Oakmont http://www.oakmont-countryclub.org/ in October of 2005, only 18 months removed before the 2007 US Open won by Angel Cabrera. This completed the 18 green drainage installation, as the club to chose to try and match internal groundwater soil moisture control across the full subsurface drainage spectrum on all their venerable putting surfaces to help attain consistent growing conditions for each poa annua plant.

It will be interesting for me to observe any XGD lateral visibility at this July’s US Women’s Open event http://www.usga.org/ . I believe that some organic material has slowly built back up again in the XGD backfill material utilized from Boyd Materials http://www.dmboyd.com/ 70:20:10 blend which generally exhibits an infiltration rate near 4″/hour. My bet is the drainage laterals may be slightly visible if the weather conditions allow the greens department to totally dictate moisture control on the putting surfaces.

So once again congratulations to Oakmont Country Club, clearly a recurring theme in USGA events as another men’s open is returning here in a few short years. I attended the 2007 event here and it was the most well run event of any type I have ever attended. If you get the chance to be near the Pittsburgh area during the week of July 5th, I encourage any and all to attend just to check out quite possibly golf’s toughest test.

Sincerely, Poor Old Dirt & Grass Farmer