A Sod Story : Riviera Greens Have Taken a Beating, but Officials Hope They Have Gotten to Root of Problem

The most embarrassing moment in golf last year was, well, what?

It might have been Jack Nicklaus shooting a 10 on the 14th hole, the Hell Bunker, at St. Andrews.

Maybe it was third-round leader John Huston putting off the seventh green into a lake on the last day at La Costa.

There was Scott Hoch blowing a six-shot lead with eight holes to go at Houston.

How about Greg Norman accusing Mark McCumber of cheating at the World Series of Golf at Akron?

Ugly moments all, the kind that might make you want to dump the clubs from your bag and turn it into a planter.

But at Riviera Country Club, it’s a safe bet the ugly moment they all still think about is when their greens took such a beating during the PGA Championship last August.

Never had anything supposed to be so green looked so brown. There was more grass growing on the golf balls than on the greens at Riviera during the PGA.

The greens that were rebuilt in a disjointed two-year endeavor never established a root system. Ultimately, they turned the rich color of mud. The pros in their metal spikes quickly changed the texture of the greens into something like waffle irons.

If that wasn’t bad enough, putts hopped and bounced and took off at angles normally reserved for geometry class.

Add it all up and it cost the greens superintendent his job and the club its reputation.

“They had to be the worst championship greens I had ever seen,” said Bill Bengeyfield, a Riviera consultant and a member of the USGA greens section for 37 years.

Maybe, but when the Nissan Open begins this week at storied Riviera, there’s a good chance that the pros actually might be complaining about the length of the rough instead of the condition of the greens.

That would be a change, and just what beleaguered Riviera officials are hoping for. The greens still have a lot of young growth and the root system is three to five inches deep, but at least there are roots down there, and they are growing.

So, what’s going to happen this week?

“It’s a good question, how the greens are going to do,” Riviera club pro Mike Miller said.

Bengeyfield, who assumed responsibility for the greens program after superintendent Bill Baker left, said he hopes they will hold up well. He just isn’t completely sure.

“What’s going to happen when the pros get there with spiked shoes, I don’t know,” he said. “I just hope spikes and heel prints will not be a major problem like it was last August.”

No one has been allowed to wear metal spikes at Riviera since Steve Elkington walked off No. 18, right after he beat Colin Montgomerie in a playoff to win the PGA. Metal spikes will reappear at Riviera when the pros start playing practice rounds Monday.

In the period between this weekend and Thursday’s first round, there will be two pro-ams, a celebrity-am and practice by the pros. Riviera General Manager Peter Pino estimates that 1,000 rounds will be played.

“The greens are going to take a real beating before the tournament even starts,” he said.

Pino said he’s confident Bengeyfield’s plan for the greens, which basically revolves around drastic watering cutbacks, will be the right one to solve the problem with the greens. Dan Vasquez, who was Baker’s aide, works closely with Bengeyfield as superintendent.

“We’ve stayed on one program,” Pino said. “We’re not taking advice from 15 different people. Consultants, members, whoever, everybody had advice. Unfortunately, too many cooks spoil the broth.”

The short version of what happened to Riviera’s greens is that almost everything that could go wrong went very, very wrong.

Ben Crenshaw and his partner, Bill Coore, had the project to rebuild the greens. They recommended the greens be seeded, but sod was used instead. Since Riviera records about 60,000 rounds a year and memberships run as high as $75,000, it was considered important to get the members back on the course quickly.

In 1993, the sod was put in late, for a variety of reasons, and the grass didn’t grow properly.

By the time of the PGA, Baker was caught between the PGA’s desire for speedy greens that looked attractive on television and the need to keep them healthy enough to survive.

The greens were fertilized to make them look nicer, but Baker couldn’t put enough water on them to keep them firm, which also was his mandate. As a result, the greens got fried and Riviera’s reputation got roasted.

“Our credibility has been marred,” Pino said. “Now we have a chance for Riviera to show it’s everything it was meant to be.”

They have brought in the rough on most fairways, let it grow a little and firmed up the greens for the Nissan Open. On No. 1, the fairway is only 26 yards wide, about four yards narrower than it was for the PGA.

As for the greens, Nos. 2 and 6 might be the weakest of the lot, but that is an improvement too, at least in terms of numbers.

It probably was encouraging that the biggest issue on Friday at Riviera was finishing the repairs to the turf alongside the sixth green after a four-inch water line had burst early Thursday. The water had flooded the bunker and rushed in a torrent down the left side of the green.

But at least no one was complaining about he condition of the greens.

“I’m still twitching from the PGA,” Pino said. “It was painful.”