Turf

96 FROM THE ROUGH During his 10 years at Jack Nicklaus' Muirfield Village Golf Club—including five as superintendent—Mike Takach learned a thing or two about bentgrass. "The biggest thing I learned about bentgrass at Muirfield is just how far you can push it," Takach said. "The challenge is always trying to keep a balance between playability, aesthetics and the health of the turf." Takach has been superintendent at the Pinnacle Golf Club located near Columbus, Ohio, since it opened in 2005. The course is almost wall- to-wall bent, with L-93 covering everything but the rough. The Ohio climate serves the grass well, except for July and August, where the heat and humidity is especially stressful to the turf. Success "We'll hand water fairways, tees and greens during those summer months, but the rest of the year the bent thrives," he said. "We try to keep our greens at about 10.5-feet, which seems to work well with our green countours. We can get there pretty easily with a height- of-cut around .125-inch. We'll mix in some light rolling, frequent verticutting and an occasional triplex mow." The biggest challenge for Takach and his team actually has very little to do with grass. "We have a creek that runs through this course and has contact with 14 holes," Takach said. "Every time it rains there is some type of erosion where the creek is trying to do something different. We have a lot of rock walls holding up greens and tees." An iron archway from the original Brach family (candy manufacturer) mansion serves as the centerpiece for wedding ceremonies at Pinnacle Golf Club.Pinnacle will hold an average of three weddings per week for eight months out of the year. Couples exhange vows under an iron archway that once greeted guests at the Brach (the candy manufacturer) family mansion. BENTGRASS MANAGEMENT "The ~

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