Scott Fretz, Superintendent
Wachesaw Plantation Club
Wachesaw Plantation, once the site of two 19th-century rice plantations, is located on the edge of the Waccamaw River near Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Today Wachesaw Plantation is a private residential golf community, but remnants of its past continue to be carefully uncovered.
When Scott Fretz arrived as superintendent, the number 17 green at Wachesaw Plantation was the club’s weakest green.
"It (number 17) is by far one of the most challenging environmental settings to grow a green. It’s in a bowl, and especially in the fall and the early winter, the direction of the sun is such that you don’t get direct sunlight on this green until after 12:00 (noon). If you have a frost in December, January, or February it’s not uncommon for the frost to stick around on this green until 11 or 11:30," explains Fretz.
"The interesting story about this green is that when I got here in 2003 there was a 30" fan that had only run for about 3 or 4 weeks in the month of August before it had to be taken down for winter storage because a hurricane was coming. The next year in 2004 and again in 2005, I ran that fan on this green basically 24 hours per day all the way from June through August and the green seemed to show signs of improvement. When you have a weak green such as this one, you can’t fix it overnight. It takes months; it sometimes takes years for it to get its strength back," says Fretz.
In the summer of 2006, electricity became unavailable at number 17 because of construction taking place at a home along the course. This left the green essentially without a fan through the summer and number 17 struggled; demonstrating to Fretz how important fans are to turf health in the summertime .
"I was fortunate enough, when we got the electricity back on, to change the 30" fan to a 50" fan, which we got up and running in May of 2007. Almost immediately, with the volume of air that the 50" can move compared with what the 30 was doing, this green was almost one of the best by the end of last summer. We had no problems with it at all. It just continues to get stronger. If I was to get a soil probe right now and I showed you the root density and root mass on this green, it would be as strong as any other on the golf course right now. If I had a conversation with you back in 2003, I wouldn’t even think of that being possible.