Bulletin of the Green Section of the U. S. Golf Association Vol. IV Washington, D. C., February 23, 1924 No. 2 A MONTHLY PERIODICAL TO PROMOTE THE BETTERMENT OF GOLF COURSES CONTENTS. Page Annual Meeting of the Green Section, January 4 and 5_________________ 26 Opening Address of J. Frederick Byers______________________________27 The Experiences of a Green Committee Chairman. By H. Kendall Read____ 28 New Offices of the U. S. Golf Association in New York City_____________33 Bermuda Grass and Its Strains. By P. D. Maxwell___________________ 34 Death of John M. Inglis-_________________________________________ 36 Greenkeepers ’ Register __________________________________________ 36 New Member Clubs of the Green Section_____________________________36 A 5-Unit Mower with Wide-Faced Caster Wheels_____________________ 37 A Costly Experience_____________________________ :_______________37 Appreciating Your Greenkeeper____________________________________ 40 Some U. S. Golf Association Decisions on the Bules of Golf______________41 The Green Section; Its Needs and Its Opportunities. By 0. V. Piper_____ 42 Greenkeepers ’ Register _____________________________-____________ 46 Questions and Answers___________________________________________ 46 Meditations of a Peripatetic Golfer_________________________________ 52 MEMBERS OF THE GREEN COMMITTEE OF THE UNITED *Db. C. V. Pipes, Chairman Dr. R. A. Oakley, Vice-Chairman *E. 3. Marshall, Vice-Chairman Inverness Club W. A. Alexander Old Elm Club Frank B. Barrett Hollywood Golf Club A. C. U. Berry Waverly Country Club 3. K. Bole Mayfield Country Club Wm. F. Brooks Minikahda Club C. B. Buxton Dallas Country Club A. H. Campbell Toronto Golf Club Agawam Hunt Club N. Stuart Campbell Glen Echo Country Club W. C. Ferguson Oakmont Country Club Wm, C. Fownes, Jr. Columbia Country Club *Dr. Walter S. Harban Druid Hills Golf Club Db. Thos. P. Hinman A. J. Hood Detroit Golf Club Frederic C. Hood Kittans ett Club Wilshire Country Club Norman Macbeth Dornick Hills Country Club P. D. Maxwell Yahnundasis Golf Club Sherrill Sherman Ekwanok Country Club James L. Taylor Morris County Golf Club Pine Valley Golf Club Denver Country Club ♦Wynant D. Vanderpool *Alan D. Wilson Frank L. Woodward STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION Washington, D. C. Washington, D. C. Toledo, Ohio Fort Sheridan, Ill. Deal, N. J. Portland, Oreg. South Euclid, Ohio Minneapolis, Minn. Dallas, Texas Toronto, Ont. Providence, R. I. Normandy, Mo. Pittsburgh, Pa. Washington, D. C. Atlanta, Ga. Detroit, Mich. Marion, Mass. Los Angeles, Cal. Ardmore, Okla. Utica, N. Y. Manchester, Vt. Convent Station, N. J. Clementon, N. J. Denver, Colo. ♦Executive Committee member. ADVISORY MEMBERS James D. Standish, Jr., Detroit, Mich. Hugh I. Wilson, Merion Cricket Club, Haverford, Pa. F. H. Hillman, Washington, D. 0. W. R. Walton, Washington, D. C. Lyman Carrier, Washington, D. C. Published by the Green Committee of the United States Golf Association, 456 Louisiana Avenue, Washington, D. C. Editorial Offices: P. 0. Box 313, Washington, D. C. Subscription price: To golf clubs that are members of the Green Section of the U. S. Golf Association, $4.00 per year (included in membership fee). Entered as second-class matter December 16, 1921, at the postoffice at Washington, D. C.. under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1924, by the Green Committee of the U. S. Golf Association. 26 BULLETIN OF GREEN SECTION OF THE Vol. iv, No. 2 Annual Meeting of the Green Section January 4 and 5, 1924 The annual meeting of the Green Section was held at Hotel Astor, New York City, with sessions in the morning and afternoon of January 4 and a morning session January 5. Mr. Findlay S. Douglas, President of the Metropolitan Golf Association, presided. The attendance at each session was over 200. Great interest and much enthusiasm were displayed. An elaborate luncheon was served January 4. Mr. P. D. Maxwell, of the Dornick Hill Country Club, Ardmore, Oklahoma, was elected to a vacancy on the Green Committee of the United States Golf Association. The officers of the Committee for 1923, and also its executive committee, were re­ elected for the year 1924. The following addresses were delivered at the sessions: Opening Address. President J. Frederic Byers, United States Golf Association. The Vegetative Planting of Putting Greens. Illustrated with colored lantern slides. Prof. Lyman Carrier, Green Committee, United States Golf Association. Drainage. “Wendell P. Miller, Agricultural Engineering Department, Ohio State University. “Watering the Fairways. William F. Brooks, Minikahda Club, Min- neapolis. The Soil Foundation of a Putting Green. Frank B. Barrett, Holly­ wood Golf Club. The Experiences of a Green-Committee Chairman. H. Kendall Read, Country Club of Atlantic City. The Japanese Beetle. B. R. Leach, United States Department of Agri­ culture, Riverton, N. J. The Brown-Patch Disease. R. A, Oakley, Vice-Chairman, Green Com­ mittee, United States Golf Association. Preventing the Seeding of Crab Grass. Robert Scott, Baltimore Country Club. Bermuda Grass and Its Strains. P. D. Maxwell, Dornick Hills Coun­ try Club, Ardmore, Okla. The Chicago Green Section and Its Work. Leonard Macomber, Active Chairman, Green Section, Chicago District Golf Association. How the Green Section Helps the Golf Clubs. George Low, Baltusrol Golf Club, The Green Section; Its Needs and Its Opportunities. C. V. Piper, Chairman, Green Committee, United States Golf Association. We are able to publish a few of these addresses in this number of The Bulletin ; the remainder will appear in early issues. The Green Section is greatly indebted to President Wynant D. Vander­ pool and Executive Secretary T. J. McMahon, of the United States Golf Association, and to Messrs. Findlay S. Douglas and Frank B. Barrett, of the Metropolitan Golf Association, for their spendid work in making the meetings so great a success. Does your greenkeeper get The Bulletin? If not, see that his name is on the mailing list. He is the man who needs assistance. Any member club may obtain any number of additional subscriptions for The Bulletin, for use in con­ nection with the work of its own club only, for $2 per year. 3?eb. 23, 1924. UNITED STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION 27 Opening Address of President J. Frederick Byers Annual Meeting of the Green Section, January 4. The officers of the United States Golf Association are very proud of this remarkable movement which has been inaugurated by the Green Sec­ tion. A little over three years ago it was a wonderful conception of Dr. Piper’s, who, with Dr. Harban and Prof. Carrier and Dr. Oakley, started this movement, which was then more or less of an experiment. Little did we think then that in less than three years the Green Section would attain a membership practically as large as that of the United States Golf Asso­ ciation ; but today this is the fact. The reasons for this are many; but I think one of the main reasons is the fact that the golfers of the country have come to realize the tremendous economic value of the information given out by the Green Section. It is difficult to estimate the saving and the economic value of its work, but its steady growth proves that the golfers of the "country, the green committees, and the greenkeepers have come to realize its tremendous value. I would just like to read a section of the report of the Executive Committee of the United States Golf Association to be presented tomorrow at the main session. This is submitted by Mr. Alan D. Wilson, Chairman of the Committee on the Green Section: “The Committee on Green Section report that during this, the third year of its existence, the membership has increased from 550 to 647 clubs and is now practically on a par with the membership of the United States Golf Association. “The proposed cooperation with the Department of Agriculture for experimental and research work has been accomplished, the United States Golf Association contributing $3,500 a year to the Green Section funds for that purpose. “The hoped-for field service has been established, and has proved so popular and resulted in so many requests for special visits that it is feared it will unduly increase the expenses of the Section. In view of the fact that for geographical reasons this service can not be given to all member clubs, it is thought the fairest method will be to arrange some plan by which the clubs which demand and receive this special service will pay for it. Routine visits of inspection will, of course, be made as heretofore with­ out charge. “During the year 12 numbers of The Bulletin, of 2,000 copies each, have been issued, 162 inspections have been made of the courses of mem­ ber clubs, and the number of district Green Sections shows a gratifying and constant increase. “We would like to call the attention of the member clubs to the unsel­ fish service of the three men in the Department of Agriculture who have made the Green Section possible, Professors C. V. Piper, R. A. Oakley, and Lyman Carrier. For three years these men have edited The Bulletin, made hundreds of inspections, solved many problems, given much advice, answered innumerable inquiries, and discovered and made practical the vegetative method of planting bent,—and all this without remuneration of any kind, with no hope of reward except in their opportunity to spread the doctrine of good turf and in the chance to teach the clubs of this coun­ try how fine turf may best be secured and maintained. “The practical results accomplished in the improved condition of golf courses and the rise in the general standard of maintenance in the past three years are the best proofs we can give of the immense debt of gratitude we owe to these men.” 28 BULLETIN OF GREEN SECTION OF THE Vol. iv, No. 2 I think Mr. Wilson has really expressed, in that short report, all that I could say. But I do wish to say, on behalf of the United States Golf Association, that I think the golfers of the country owe to these gentle­ men, Prof. Piper, Dr. Oakley, and Prof. Carrier, a debt of gratitude which can not be expressed in words; and I would like to say personally that I can not tell them how much we appreciate it in our committee. I am very glad indeed to see such a large turnout here today, and I wish all the luck in the world during the coming year to the Green Section. The Experiences of a Green Committee Chairman Address Delivered by H. Kendall Read, of the Country Club of Atlantic City, Before the Annual Meeting of the Green Section, January 4, 1924. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Green Section: When Dr. Piper wrote me asking me to speak on this subject, I made up my mind that they were indulging in a chuckle down there in Washington, because I felt that if any man was qualified to speak as a “green” committee chairman, I was the man, as I do not think anybody was ever any greener than I was a few years ago when I started in with this work. I got into green committee work very unexpectedly. The Country Club of Atlantic City, I guess, is no different—no better and no worse— in the way in which it has been run than many of the other golf courses throughout the country. The green committees of the past have been recruited from the members of the club—good players, or men who had considerable to do with its management or were interested from a financial standpoint. But the green committees were just the usual green commit­ tees, and there was no particular effort made to blaze any new trails or to change any old systems; and they just simply went along. I was put on the committee first as a member. And, by the way, I am not speaking in any boastful sense, but simply because I have been asked to give my own experiences. I shall not give you all my experiences, because that would be too funny. We have had all sorts of stormy times, as you always have when you try to break new ground and change old methods. The chairman that year (two years ago) sent down from his office to my home in Atlantic City everything he had relating to green committee work—maps, estimates on different work that was to be done and in course of construction and vari­ ous plans submitted by different prominent architects as to changes in the course here and there; and with this came the curt advice that I was to go ahead and run the course. I am reminded of a story of a farmer who was working in a field, and suddenly from a road hard by, a cloud of dust flew up, and he heard the .sounds of a fierce struggle going on; and he was naturally interested. He left his plow and ran over to the fence, and, looking down the road, he •.saw a fellow farmer holding desperately on to a very wild ram—holding on by the horns, and he was having a fierce time of it; and, being friends, the farmer said, “Do you want me to come there and help you hold that ram?” And the friend replied, “Not much; but come here and help me let him go.” That was just about my experience; I had a ram by the horns, but had no way of letting it go. I started out to get some information; and there is where the fun began. Fortunately, we had had audits of our accounts made regularly over a period of years, and I got from the auditing concern reports for the two years previous as fully itemized as I could get them, separating all Feb. 23, 1924. UNITED STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION 29 the different items that go to make up the greenkeeping budget. _ That was rather interesting. There were two items on this list of expenditures that stood out very prominently. One was labor, which, of course, is always a big item in green committee work; and the other was grass seed. We had bought lots of seed. The year before, the seed bill exceeded $4,000. We have 27 holes, by the way, and they used seed very generously, according to that statement. However, they had some excuse, because in the past they had been acting upon advice that had been given to them by ‘ ‘ experts. ’ ’ Among the things that were sent down to me by the chairman was a report written by a very prominent seed expert connected with a well-known seed house, and that report is interesting reading. Just last night I copied one paragraph which is especially interesting in the light of present-day information. That report is dated September 30. I will read one para­ graph of it. This is a kind of summary: “However, to get the full benefit of this seeding, the greens should be prepared and seeded down within two weeks’ time, and it is quite pos­ sible to get the young grass up strong enough to allow you to come right back in November with the winter seeding and another dressing. This will give you a good start early in the spring.” That meant 100 pounds of seed to a green—the first 50 pounds the middle of September and another nice generous dose about the middle of November. I can easily see how, acting upon such recommendations, that they could spend $4,000 for seed very readily in the course of a year. Time for the spring seeding was coming on, and I was as green then as the grass out there. It was suggested that we should prepare for this seeding. I asked where we had been buying our seed, and was told that it was from a reputable house. I was advised that we ought to have 50 or 60 pounds to a green. We had 27 greens, and it was not hard to figure that out. We cut it down to the very low figure of 50 pounds to a green; and not having any more information than I had at that time, I bought it. No one could tell me the kind of seed we had been using on our fairways or greens. They were simply mixtures prepared by the seed house. Then I hied myself to the office of the manager of the seed house from which we had been buying, and asked him what seed he had been selling us, what formula they were giving us for our fairways and our greens. He started looking through some archives but could not find it; no doubt it was there, but he could not put his finger on it. I asked him to get it for me. He said, “I will phone up to the foreman of the warehouse, who makes up the orders.” He did that, and I finally found out, after a very tedious hunt, what we were paying that $4,000 or $4,500 a year for—I am ashamed to tell you what it was; I am not going to (laughter). I have learned some things since then, and there is a limit to credulity, and I don’t propose to test yours. While talking to this seedsman and asking him questions (I was after all the information I could get), I noticed that he would reach up to a shelf and pull out a volume he had up there; and he did this so often that I made up my mind that this must be a very valuable book—kind of a bible. I finally got up my nerve and said, “Will you let me look at that book?” And he handed it to me, and it was a book by Flint on grasses, written in 1857. He considered it most valuable, and thought it reliable. But he could not tell me where I could get a eopy, it was too long out of print. Finally I managed to get one at Leary’s Old Book Store. And I found that the way they distinguished the grasses in that book was by the flowers (laughter). They had to wait until a grass grew long enough to 30 BULLETIN OF GREEN SECTION OF THE vol. iv. No. 2 blossom (laughter). I could not see where that was going to do me much good on our golf course. I remember that just about that time I bumped into a book written by Piper and Oakley. I got'a copy of that in Wanamaker’s. As I was passing through the store I met a prominent golf man in our locality, and said, “I have here a book by Piper and Oakley on grasses.” He shook his head and said, “Well, you want to go a little slowly.” He was an older man than I, and had a fatherly interest, I imagine, in my early struggles. He said, “You know, there is a lot of experimental stuff being pulled off these days; but you don’t want to get far off the old well-beaten path that has been tried out and is known to be sound. That book is all right, but I would not put too much credence in it.” I went home with the book and used it religiously up to the time the Bulletins came out, and I have been using them ever since. About that time I heard that there was such a thing as a Green Section in Philadelphia. There was a local section there, and our course was not a member, and I immediately took steps to see that we got into it. There was a meeting held shortly after that and Dr. Oakley was the speaker of the evening, and I remember that that was the first time the termvegetatively planted greens” ever tickled my ear. I was sitting by a man who I knew had been chairman of the green committee of a prominent club for many years, and I listened as long as I could without showing any undue disrespect, and then I asked this man alongside of me, “What the devil is he talking about?” And he answered, “I am damned if I know.” Now that is about the situation, I imagine, in which a great many of us have been. This is new stuff, and I think a great many people are somewhat timid about going ahead and trying it out. We tried very hard to get Dr. Oakley to come down and look over our course. He asked me to write him about our troubles, and said that they would give us what help they could. We told him that this was no ease for absent treatment. We said, “We are in real trouble here, and we want some real help.” After plugging him with a good many letters, Prof. Carrier finally made us a visit. At that time we promised Prof. Carrier that whatever recommenda­ tions he would make to our club, or the Green Section would make to our club, would be carried out 100 per cent. If he told us a certain thing was desirable to do, or if the Green Section told us so, we would not fiddle about it or monkey with it, but would do it absolutely, as far as we were able; and I believe that is a very important, thing, gentlemen. I tbink that if you are tied up, as you ought to be, with the Green Section, you should take advantage of the data which they have prepared and the pub­ lished results of their researches. I do not think you should take it in any half-hearted fashion. If you intend to go along with them, you want to go the whole route; and you will not be very far wrong if you do. After Prof. Carrier had been there, we started a bent nursery, and after that we put in another one and we have had them going since May of 1922; and we ourselves have put down eight vegetatively planted bent greens. We had 13 greens, built a few years ago, which were not very good; but now we have vegetative turf on eight of those greens. Gentle­ men, we are sold on the vegetative green; there is nothing in the world to compare with it. Some of those greens that we put in are the prettiest pieces of turf, I think, that any one could possibly get—absolute uniformity of color, texture, and growth. You have just one kind of grass; and after Jeb. 23, 1924. UNITED STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION 31 you have a vegetative green of creeping bent, and have had the pleasure of working with it and developing it, I do not think you would be satisfied with anything else. These greens, if properly planted and taken over the initial stages, require less work and upkeep than any other piece of turf you could have. We will never put any other kind of grass on our greens but bent, and by the vegetative method. We grow all out own grasses; all the strains that we have, we have gotten from our own turf. We grew three strains in the nursery beds, and we put down every one. We singled out one as the most desirable, and all our future work will be confined to the use of that one grass. Now I want to tell you something about that. We found that grass in front of a tee which had been tramped over for goodness knows how many years. Still it looked good, was bushy and close-jointed, and had all the earmarks of a good bent. We started to take it up—Prof. Carrier was there that day, and we got a spade to get a little sod. We started to dig with that spade, but we could not make any impression on it. Then the groundman finally got in with his No. 10, and kicked on it; and finally, gentlemen, that spade buckled up and bent. The only way we could get that sod started was by edging in with another spade down at the corner of it, and in that way we got through that turf of bent. I have never seen such tough, resistent stuff in all my life. There was a mass of runners that were at least 1% or 1% inches, thick—just one solid mass. You could take a two-inch strip at the top and tear it down the whole length, just the same as you would tear a strip of linen, and it would keep its width abso­ lutely uniform all the way down. You could shake the dirt away from that two-inch strip, and with the runners that were left you could tie it into a double knot like a piece of string, and then untie it, and it remained the same. I do not believe there is a man in this room who could have taken that two-inch strip and have broken it with his hands. . Now, that is what bent can do. That is what bent did do in this par­ ticular instance. I wish we had that all over our fairways. When we took the tops off the old greens to replace them with this vegetative bent, some very interesting things developed. We came to our old friend, Brother Humus. These greens had been treated according to instructions, and they had been given liberal doses of humus, and when we took the sod off you could hold it up and count the applications of humus that turf had received. There it was, in its original form—that pasty, putty-like layer, which never had amalgamated or lost its identity; it had not worked into the soil at all. You could read the history of the applications of humus by the layer-cake lines. If you tore the sod apart, you would find that the roots of the grass would go down to the first layer of humus, and then curl up like a sick chicken. We have never bought a pound of humus since then; we do not believe in it—certainly not put on in that way, at any rate. Now, just a word or two about vegetative planting. I do not want to repeat something that has been said, but in planting our greens vegetatively I made up my mind that one of the essential things was keeping the stolons moist, and I thought that if water was good on top of the stolons, it was good underneath. Before we plant the stolons on top of the greens, we always water the greens. In other words, we get a moist bed to put them on, and then water them immediately after the top-dressing is put on. We are on sandy soil, although the top soil of our greens is from our own com­ post, which is pretty good suff. No. 4 green on our regular course we planted late last spring. We had things ready in the late afternoon, so 32 BULLETIN OF GREEN SECTION OF THE VoL IV’ N°- 2 we planted about one-quarter of that green late in the day. Then we stopped. It was right near the bent bed, and we simply took the bent up as we needed it. We finished our planting on that green the following morning. There was only a difference of 12 to 15 hours in the planting time between the first quarter and the last three quarters; but it looked to me as if there were almost ten days or two weeks difference in the growth of those two sections of that green. In other words, the quarter that was planted in the late afternoon, when no sun hit it, showed a tremendous dif­ ference, and made a much earlier start than the grass that was planted the following morning, which was a hot, sunshiny day, and where, even in spite of frequent waterings during the day, there must have been considerable evaporation and consequently more or less drying-out of the stolons. The quarter of the green planted the latter part of the day so far outstripped the balance of it that there is no real comparison; it was the same grass, planted by the same men, the same machinery used, and the same methods employed, the only difference being in the time of planting. Now, composting. We do not lose anything in the way of material for composting. We save all our green clippings, all the leaves raked out of our somewhat scanty woods, pine needles, and so forth; and nearly every­ thing that we have goes into the compost pile. We have used a. tremendous amount of top-dressing. There was a tract of land opened up alongside of us for building lots, which had been a good farm, and we made a contract with the men who were doing the street grading for the use of the top soil. I think we got about 4,000 cubic yards of pretty good top soil off of that farm. I am such a firm believer in top-dressing and compost that we do not lose any opportunity at any time to get hold of material of that char­ acter. On top of that we spread 80 tons of manure that we had bought at a farm sale. We have used in the last two years 35 earloads of mushroom soil on our fairways; but with all that soil, with the thousands of cubic yards of compost which we have acquired, with all the work that we have done, in building new greens, with the multiplication of tees, and with the enlargement-of old ones, we have spent less money than we spent before. The biggest part of our saving probably was in seed. They used to spend $4,000 or $4,500 for seed; but if they sell me $500 worth now, I feel that I have been stuck. The only seed we use is bluegrass with a little redtop for the fairways and tees. We have not put a grain of seed on our greens for a year and a half. I kept that a secret for a while, because I was afraid I would be ordered shot at sunrise, by the members of the club; but our greens have never been in such fine condition before. The bents have come in fast; the clover has largely disappeared. Of course, we use am­ monium sulfate; we believe in that as a fertilizer; and the greens have had four doses during the season. The ammonium sulfate surely did wonders for those greens. Where before you had to look for the bents, now you can not look anywhere without finding them. Beside the 35 carloads of mushroom soil, we have used about 75 tons of clay. We got that from a brickyard near the club. They have a stratum of soil which they get into before they reach the brick clay, and for us it is fine for composting and top-dressing; it is a kind of sandy clay; it is not pasty or thick, and we do not hesitate to put it right onto the fairway just as it comes. In putting on mushroom soil, we use a chain harrow. We could not live without this tool We chain-harrow our fairways; we put the mush­ room soil on, and chain-harrow it thoroughly. We put in our seed, and chain-harrow it again. Then we roll it in two directions. We find you can dress a fairway in that way, with a generous application, and there is not Feb. 23, 1924. UNITED STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION 33 much objection from the members. There is really little inconvenience, if you do it that way. We never handle material twice; we always haul it directly from the car at the railroad siding to the fairway on which we are going to use it. The Country Club at Atlantic City has become famous for several things, but for nothing, perhaps, any more than the multiplicity of its artificial bunkers and mounds, all of which mean hand work.- We had literally hundreds and hundreds of those abrupt mounds on our course—■ sharp little pockets and cops; and I suppose all of you have some of them. We had one cluster of 64 cops. You put a man in there working on Monday, and he is still there on Friday. Now, that is all nonsense. We wonder why we have to spend so much on upkeep; but we are right now getting rid of all that, and you will not know our course when you come down there again. We have simply gone in there and ripped all that junk out from stem to stern; removed all of those abrupt mounds and all the old cross-bunkers, and we are now rid of all that crazy stuff. We had 145 of those things on one hole. That is a fact. We will not build a single mound anywhere which you can not drive a team of horses over with a mower or chain-harrow. In other words, we are through with hand-labor, so far as we can eliminate it. There is where your big item of upkeep comes in, as I see it. We are doing something else that may interest you. At the present time we are going in between the fairways of parallel holes, and turning it .all into a rolling sandy waste, with no grass, no upkeep. That is what the Green Section has been pleading _ for; and we can do that down in our sandy country. It is really beautiful, and it is easily kept up; and when we want to shake it up a little, we can drive a chain harrow over it. There is nothing that we are building at the present time on which we can not use a horse or power machinery. We are building four new greens and abandoning four others, and everything we are doing is always with an eye to cost of upkeep. I have taken up too much time already, I am sure. I have simply been rambling along. There is just one passing thought that I want to leave with you, and that is that the Green Section deserves full credit for whatever we have been able to accomplish at the Country Club of Atlantic City. When I started in I didn’t know any more about turf than a child knows. Information on the subject was practically nil; and I never found any really reliable information until I found the Green Section; and when I did find it, I tied right up to it 100 per cent, and the results down there that we have been able to bring about through this connection have been so satisfactory to the club that the Board of Governors are generously sup­ porting us at the present time in all these new improvements. Without the Green Section these results could not have been accomplished. New Offices of the United States Golf Association in New York City The executive offices of the United States Golf Association have been moved from 55 John Street to Eoom 712, Bowery Savings Bank Building 110 East 42d St., New York. Mr. T. J. McMahon, the efficient Executive Secretary of the Association, will be in charge at the new location. A cordial invitation is extended to all persons interested in golf in any of its features to visit and inspect the new offices. 34 BULLETIN OF GREEN SECTION OF THE Vol. iv, No. 2 Bermuda Grass and Its Strains Address of P. D. Maxwell, Dornick Hills Country Club, Ardmore, Oklahoma, at the Annual Meeting of the Green Section, January 5. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, it gives me a peculiar pleasure to sub­ stitute for as distinguished a gentleman as Dr. Hinman, of Atlanta, who has been as much to our southern golf as some of the other leading lights of the Green Section have been to your northern golf. I have had a somewhat interesting golf experience. Twenty-seven years ago I had a breakdown in college, and was sent to the semi-arid regions of the west to recover from tuberculosis. At that time, 1897, I went to what is now Oklahoma; it was then Indian Territory. I do not believe there were then five golf courses in America west of the Mississippi River. There were not over 50 east of the Mississippi River, or in the whole country, probably. Surely there were none within 500 miles of our section of the country. It was the last place in the world that any one coming from the home of golf, Scotland, would select for a golf course, because golf is a game played on grass; and Oklahoma is a short-grass coun­ try, very short grass, with none of the finer varieties—bluegrass and bents. If you -would use those terms on the average golf course in the south today they -would think you were talking Russian. But with civilization coming nearer to us all the while, in 1907 we were given statehood and in 1913 the ways of civilized man penetrated into our wilderness, and a few of us, at least, had heard of golf. Reading an article in Scribner’s Magazine, written by Mr. H. W. Whigham on the establishment of the National Golf Course near Southampton, Long Island, in this out-of-the-way place in Oklahoma I said I thought golf was just a game for the effete, and I wondered if it was possible to have a golf course in our part of the world. That article was very attractively written, and described the National Golf Course from a landscape standpoint as well as a test of golf. My wife was the artist of the family. It was she who found this article, and she said, ‘ ‘ I wonder if that thing could be adapted to this section of the coun­ try. We have a beautiful piece of ground out north of our city, and I wonder if it could be adapted to golf?” I do not think either of us had ever seen a golf course before. That was in 1913. Well, I began making inquiries, and they said yes, there were a few golf courses in north Texas. I visited them, and they all had sand greens. I wonder how many of you have ever had the displeasure of playing on a sand green. That was all we had in that part of the country. I first wrote to the Department of Agriculture at Washington, and at that time we did not have the efficient Green Section that we now have, and it was rather scant information that we got. They said, “We are afraid you are a little too far south for bluegrass and a little too far north for Bermuda.” So there we were between the devil and the deep blue sea. I then made a trip through the southern country, visiting the few Bermuda green courses in the cities of Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, and in Florida, and I found that was all that we had to go on,, that we must have Bermuda grass if we had anything. But there was a dearth of infor- mation, as there seems to be all over the country now, in regard to grass. No one seemed to know much about it. They would tell me how to plant it and how to top-dress it, and how to bring it out, and all this and that, but they were overlooking what I now think is the most important thing with respect to grass, either in the south or in the north, and that is the selection of the particular strain to propagate. Feb. 23, 1924. UNITED STATES GOLF ASSOCIATION 35 The vegetative method is very old in the south. Until a few years ago that was the only way we did propagate Bermuda grass in our lawns; that is, by taking roots from one yard and transplanting them into another. The matter of seeding Bermuda grass came in only comparatively recently, as seed is now being produced in Arizona and New Mexico, but never in Mississippi or Louisiana or farther eastward. In 1915, as I say, I made this trip through the south, and then came on east. I walked right into Mr. R. C. Watson’s office, who was then occupying the position to be held by Mr. Vanderpool, and told him I was just a seeker after knowledge and would like to have the privilege of visiting a few of the eastern golf courses, having no social connections or acquaintances in the east; and he very kindly gave me a letter to a dozen or more of your prominent courses, and I visited them. At that time I would say to the average greenkeeper I found in the east, “What kind of grass is this?” And he would say, “I don’t know what it is.” And he did not know what it was. Many of them would just say, “Bluegrass.” The idea that I am trying to get over to you is how little they knew about this complex problem, as Dr. Piper has reit­ erated time and time again, and we are still in the elementary stage. The only way to get these problems solved is by enthusiasm. The information that I have gained has been by traveling over practically all of the southern country. It remained for the Green Section to really point out t