Bladerunner FarmsPress Room Archive
GCI: A Texas-style tour (Type: articles)
Team Zoysia hosted the Zoysia & The Future of Golf Tour at Bladerunner Farms, located just south of San Antonio in Poteet, Texas, before tradeshow portion of the Golf Industry Show.
The focus of the tour was the scientific breakthrough in zoysiagrass breeding and research that promises to change the way golf courses are grassed. Zoysia, a sustainable family of grasses, (low water, low inputs, lower maintenance costs) has been touted in recent years for its beauty and playability on fairways and tees. But now, new varieties bred especially for golf greens are ready for use in the golf market—something virtually unheard of until now.
Golfdom: What’s new? Maybe zoysia greens (Type: articles)
| February 8, 2018
What’s new, what’s new? You hear it asked by just about everybody at GIS every year. Well, this year, how about something that’s been virtually unheard of until now? That would be the first hybrid zoysia grass bred for golf course greens.
On Tuesday of this week, Team Zoysia played host to the “Zoysia and the Future of Golf Tour” at Bladerunner Farms, located just south of San Antonio in Poteet, Texas. The tour focused, according to the company, “on a scientific breakthrough in zoysiagrass breeding and research” that promises to change the way golf courses are grassed.
New Zoysia Varieties Offer Enhanced Ability to Extract Salt from Soil and Water (Type: articles)
Management of salinity has become integral to the sustainability of the golf industry. Dwindling freshwater resources and recurrent droughts have made the use of marginal water, sourced from either reclaimed municipal sources or aquifers contaminated by saltwater intrusion, routine, especially in the south. In recent decades the industry has turned to Paspalum, a known halophyte, as a species to address high salinity situations including coastal developments, saline soils and more recently the utilization of effluent and alternative water resources.
GOLF COURSES AROUND THE WORLD GRASSED WITH ZOYSIA (Type: articles)
Golf courses around the world are grassed with
zoysiagrasses developed by Bladerunner Farms.
Zoysia for Greens Handout (Type: articles)
Decades of research and development created a breakthrough in the advancement of zoysiagrass varieties for golf course greens. Greens grassed with these new varieties benefit from all of the sustainability features of zoysiagrass (low fertility, salt tolerance, shade tolerance), with the playability and speed required of championship quality greens. Stimp measurements of 9 to 14 feet make zoysia for greens the new reality for golf course design and management.
New Texas A&M Zoysiagrass that Performs as Ideal Putting Surface Licensed by Bladerunner Farms (Type: articles)
A golf ball sits on a section of DALZ 1308, the new putting green zoysia grass variety from the Texas A&M AgriLife Research turfgrass breeding program in Dallas. (Texas A&M AgriLife Research photo by Gabe Saldana)
AgriLife Today | January 12, 2018 | Gabe Saldana
DALLAS — A first-of-its-kind zoysia grass hybrid promises superior putting green performance and quality while requiring fewer inputs compared to other warm-season turfgrasses on the market, said Dr. Ambika Chandra, Texas A&M AgriLifeResearch turfgrass breeding program leader in Dallas. The new variety, tested as DALZ 1308, is licensed by Bladerunner Farms.
The grand tour: Zoysia experts travel through Southeast Asia (Type: articles)
Golf Course Management: Dec 06, 2017 | Milt Engelke, Ph.D.
During two-week journey, Milt Engelke and Doug Doguet explore how the turfgrass variety is impacting golf courses in the region.
An invitation to speak at the 11th-annual Asia Pacific Golf Summit (APGS) turned into a nearly two-week journey of zoysiagrass discovery around Southeast Asia for two pioneers of that turfgrass variety — Milt Engelke, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Texas A&M, and David Doguet, the owner of Bladerunner Farms, who together are co-founders of Team.
In addition to their appearance at APGS, where they were featured presenters to leading golf influencers in the Pacific Rim, Engelke and Doguet worked in a host of other stops while they were there. Those stops included a presentation at a zoysiagrass field day hosted by Brad Burgess, the owner of Sports Turf Solutions, which is Team Zoysia International’s exclusive licensee for Zeon zoysia in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Indonesia and Vietnam, along with tours of several high-profile golf development projects in the region featuring zoysia varieties, including the Ernie Els Performance Golf Academy in Hanoi, Vietnam; four other golf courses in that country; and Ayutthaya Golf Club near Bangkok, Thailand.
This story is the first of a four-part series.**
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THE ZOYSIAGRASS SOLUTION FOR SALINITY (Type: articles)
November 22, 2017 | Milt Engelke, Ph.D.
Zoysiagrass is different from other salt-tolerant species. Discover the science behind how this game-changing grass thrives in salt-heavy soils.
With zoysiagrass, salts are absorbed by the roots, are moved into the plant without tissue injury, and accumulate on the leaf surface through the biological characteristic of having very active salt glands — a characteristic unique to zoysiagrass. Photos courtesy of Team Zoysia.
The Paspalum problem
The science behind dealing with salinity has been somewhat heavily skewed toward containment or mechanically moving excessive salts through the soil profile through leaching, flushing and/or chemical treatment. Paspalums are known halophytes — they exclude salts from concentration in the leaf tissue to avoid salt tissue injury, and, as such, they can tolerate exceptionally high concentration of salts in the root zone and soil profile, at least up to a point.
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ZOYSIA RENOVATION OF OAK HILLS COUNTRY CLUB COURSE CLOSE TO COMPLETION (Type: articles)
November 23, 2017 : Golf Course Architecture
A renovation and restoration project at the historic Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio, Texas, is close to completion.
Led by architect Tripp Davis, the project has aimed to renovate the infrastructure of the course, which was designed by A.W. Tillinghast and opened in the 1920s.
GCA caught up with Davis to discuss the project, and find out how he looked to incorporate Tillinghast’s design tendencies into the recent work.
“The course had reached a point that it needed to have a lot of the infrastructure renovated, like the greens, bunkers and tees,” Davis explained. “The course needed to be regrassed with the best modern turf types for the area. The club needed their practice facilities enhanced, and there was an opportunity to restore some of the subtler elements to give the course more of a classic Tillinghast feel.”
Oak Hills hired Tripp Davis & Associates a few years ago to prepare a masterplan to organise various projects at the club. This ultimately led to a campaign to develop a financially sustainable way to move the golf course, and the club, into the next 30 years.
ZOYSIA RENOVATION OF OAK HILLS COUNTRY CLUB COURSE CLOSE TO COMPLETION (Type: post)
Golf Course Architecture | November 23, 2017 | Sean Dudley
A renovation and restoration project at the historic Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio, Texas, is close to completion.
Led by architect Tripp Davis, the project has aimed to renovate the infrastructure of the course, which was designed by A.W. Tillinghast and opened in the 1920s.
GCA caught up with Davis to discuss the project, and find out how he looked to incorporate Tillinghast’s design tendencies into the recent work.
“The course had reached a point that it needed to have a lot of the infrastructure renovated, like the greens, bunkers and tees,” Davis explained. “The course needed to be regrassed with the best modern turf types for the area. The club needed their practice facilities enhanced, and there was an opportunity to restore some of the subtler elements to give the course more of a classic Tillinghast feel.”
Oak Hills hired Tripp Davis & Associates a few years ago to prepare a masterplan to organise various projects at the club. This ultimately led to a campaign to develop a financially sustainable way to move the golf course, and the club, into the next 30 years.