Grass isn’t supposed to be pink.

Sure, sometimes it turns yellow in the late fall, and there is the bright, nearly neon green when young blades first poke through the soil in early spring.

But pink?

“It’s not a good sign when you see the pink rings,” Springbrook Golf Course superintendent Rick Newbauer said. “They come from a fungus that infects the grass.”

There are two types of “snow molds,” as they are called, that golf courses treat their greens for as the winter moves along – pink snow mold and gray snow mold.

“There’s a big difference,” Fox Ridge pro Bob Darling said. “If it’s the gray snow mold, the grass isn’t dead and can be saved if you treat it. The pink stuff, the grass is gone. It’s down to the root.”

With the harsh Maine winters that normally last from late November through the middle of March or later, it’s a wonder that more courses don’t have to replace greens and tees more often.

“There are things that you can do to prevent the fungus from forming,” Newbauer said. “One of the big things that most people notice is the aeration of greens in the fall. We punch holes about 11 inches deep in all of the greens. This allows the extra water to drain as it gets wetter and wetter later in the season.

“The biggest thing we want to avoid is standing water on the greens when the first snows start to arrive.”

In a normal winter, there will be enough snowfall for a layer of hard ice to form between the snow and the green, which forms a protective, shell-like coating over the putting surfaces.

In a winter like the most recent snow season where little snow fell at all, plowing greens late in the winter to re-apply fungicide was trickier because there wasn’t a solid protective coat of ice down.

“You can still see where the snow was piled up, though,” Newbauer said, pointing to the 18th green. “There, where it’s higher, you can tell the snow was on top of that. See how it’s greening up really well.”

At the lower end off the green, shades of yellow still form a patchwork quilt-like patter with the green grass.

Greens, though, are not the only victims in a winter with light snow.

“There was more frost this year, and it went much deeper than normal,” Newbauer said. “Some of the drainage has been pushed up from the ground.”

In a sand trap near the 18th green, a pipe protruded from beneath the water-logged gravel. Bumps resembling moguls on a ski slope still showed alongside the fairway, in the rough.

There, next to it all, was one 5-inch pink ring.

“I think that’s close to all we had,” Newbauer said. “You can’t get it all, I guess.”

Even with the late spring conditions, most area courses are targeting an opening date during the third week in April.

“Weather will play a huge part,” Newbauer said. “If we can get some of those warm temperatures in here, this will start to green up and get ready naturally in quite a hurry.”
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