Golf Digest Names David Doguet, Founder of Bladerunner Farms, to list of Golf’s Top Innovators & Influencers of 2016

Improving Lies

Story by Ron Whitten

If the business of breeding better grass is a turf war, no one is more competitive than David Doguet. His complex in the San Antonio suburbs is called Bladerunner Farms, apropos of its sod-provider origins and sci-fi-like cross-pollination operation.

Doguet (pronounced dough-gay) has made zoysia golf’s new super grass. Yes, zoysia, once characterized by quarter-inch-wide blades that provided indestructible hairbrush lies but wouldn’t green up until early summer and reverted to tan at first frost. Traditionally, the coarse grass was used only for tees and fairways in transition-zone climates—where the winters were too cold for Bermuda and the summers were too hot for bent. Never was it the ideal choice.

But Doguet’s various crossbred strains—finer-bladed, more disease- and insect-resistant, less thirsty—have changed that. His latest creation, L1F zoysia, is a sensation. It has been chosen by Tiger Woods for the tees and green surrounds at his first American course, Bluejack National in Montgomery, Texas. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw used it for the tees, fairways and green surrounds at their new Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, a future PGA Tour stop. Gil Hanse planted it at the 2016 Olympics golf course in Brazil. But only the renovated Golf Club of Texas has used L1F on the greens, making the Roy Bechtol design the first all-zoysia course in the United States.

In June, Doguet will roll out M85 zoysia. He calls it the ultimate, a near grain-less strain suitable for fairways yet capable of handling the lowest mowing height any PGA Tour official might prescribe. It keeps its color without fertilization and is salt tolerant, so it’ll remain healthy despite poor water quality. Because its blades grow very slowly, Doguet predicts M85 fairways and greens will need mowing just once or twice a week.

Of course, the proof is in the practice, not the test plot. Doguet hopes the first course to try M85 is a low-budget public course, to demonstrate that quality playing surfaces can be achieved even with modest maintenance. If that happens, Douget might have won the war. —Ron Whitten

Read the full story in Golf Digest