What’s the secret to La Quinta Country Club’s pristine greens once compared to Augusta National’s?

LA QUINTA, Calif. — Long lauded for sporting some of the best playing conditions on the PGA Tour, historic La Quinta Country Club doesn’t rest on its roll.

With PGA Tour pros Jon Rahm, Patrick Cantlay, Brendan Steele and this year’s Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson offering annual superlatives on the quality and consistency of the club’s putting surfaces, the turf team at La Quinta begins its tourney and peak-season member prep long before the first American Express ball is ever struck.

“For me, getting the greens ready to be seeded in the first week of October is the most important thing,” said Tim Putnam, director of agronomy at La Quinta Country Club. “Everything we do to create that surface that we seed into, that’s what I spend the most time worrying about and ensuring we get exactly right.”

This year’s 64th version of The American Express is far from Putnam’s first rodeo. A desert-area superintendent since the late 1990s, he began his tenure as La Quinta Country Club’s agronomy frontman in 2002. With the club preparing to co-host the PGA Tour’s annual stop in the desert for a 51st time, Putnam’s “secret sauce” for the condition of his greens once earned quality comparisons to the game’s most extolled putting surfaces at Augusta National Golf Club from Rahm during his 2018 victory in the desert.

The Lawrence Hughes design at La Quinta that opened in 1959 is considered “classic” beyond its time-tested, six-plus decades of play. With a dearth of distance by today’s tour standards (7,060 yards), combined with skinny corridors and an onus on iron accuracy, the scoring lens for professionals is most often focused on the flatstick.

“They may be some of the best surfaces I’ve ever seen,” said Scottie Scheffler, who is ranked second in the world golf ranking. “They’re really, really good. That’s consistent. It’s been like that — I think this is my fourth time here at this event — and they have been like that every time I’ve been over there.

“It’s pretty amazing what that superintendent and the club can do with those greens,” Scheffler said. “If you’re rolling it good — there’s a little bit of a pull there that can be tough to read at times — but once you start making a few putts that hole can look really big because those greens are nice.”

La Quinta Country Club Director of Agronomy Tim Putnam, left, and Senior Equipment Operator Marcelo Lopez work on the 13th green of the course in La Quinta, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (Photo: Taya Gray/USA TODAY NETWORK)

Manning a maintenance crew of two dozen employees across a relatively small turf footprint of 113 acres, Putnam’s purview is set upon every blade and each grain.

The La Quinta Country Club greens roll with Tifdwarf hybrid bermudagrass and are overseeded in October with a combination of poa trivialis and perennial ryegrass.

“The ryegrass really helps early on,” says Putnam, “and helps the Poa get established, provides a bit of shade for the Poa and helps with traffic stress.”

Per his autumn focus, Putnam’s overseed preparation includes growth regulators and verticutters working at very shallow heights.

“The key to me is getting rid of enough Bermuda tissue, so you’re creating a good seed bed,” Putnam said. “And using the verticutters to help lift up the Bermuda and get it to peel off better. And then I like to use something I stumbled upon a long time ago, a brush, called a Grain Master, and it’s got really stiff poly-bristles on it. When I drag that around, it stands the Bermuda up and also works great in conjunction with using Scythe on the putting surfaces to kind off burn off the green tissue of the Bermuda.”

Tim Putnam, Director of Agronomy at the La Quinta Country Club, measures the volume of daily clippings from a green on the course in La Quinta, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (Photo: Taya Gray/USA TODAY NETWORK)

As the course reopens from overseed and the calendar enters the holiday season, Putnam plans ahead.

“In December, I’ll have them running at a 10 ½ or 11 (on the Stimpmeter) for member play, and then heading into the AMEX, I really watch the weather,” the director of agronomy said. “If it’s going to be cool like it is now, I’ve got to be sure that they’re not too fast going into the tournament, because they won’t grow that much. And over the course of rolling the greens for five or six straight days (during the tournament week), they can get too fast.”

Around the start of the calendar year and the impending return of The American Express, Putnam and staff work a delicate dance of manning the speed of the greens. For the tournament, La Quinta’s greens actually run a shade slower than the 11 ½ (or even 12) Putnam measures on the Stimpmeter for member play the rest of the season.

Considering that, for uniform layout, pin placements remain the same across all three tournament courses for the first three rounds until every golfer has played each of the holes, Putnam needs to be additionally mindful of not making the setup too challenging for the event’s amateur players and keeping pace-of-play intact.

For American Express week, Putnam works in tandem with the PGA Tour’s agronomy staff to ensure his putting surfaces roll at similar speeds as the other two tournament courses at PGA West — the Nicklaus Tournament and Pete Dye Stadium courses.

“The tour wants the three courses to be as comparable as possible to each other, and speeds of about 11 are where they’ve settled in,” Putnam said. “Maybe a little closer to 10 ½ at PGA West, with those greens having a few bigger slopes.”

La Quinta Country Club Senior Equipment Operator Marcelo Lopez, left, and Director of Agronomy Tim Putnam work on the 13th green of the course in La Quinta, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. (Photo: Taya Gray/USA TODAY NETWORK)

In addition to the speed of the putting greens, the PGA Tour staff also pays close attention to mower heights for continuity and quality.

“We were once mowing greens at about 100 or 115-thousandths of an inch – which was the height we needed to not exceed that 10 ½ speed – but if you had a putt that was rolling across multiple mow lines, there was a tiny bit of grain-effect with ball movement,” Putnam said. “So I showed that to the PGA Tour agronomist, and told him we really needed to be at 105-thousandths of an inch to avoid that phenomenon.”

January has been cooler than average in the Coachella Valley with only two daytime high temperatures warmer than 70 degrees this month. Because of the cooler conditions, Putnam looks to return to the 110 mow height along with adding another dollop of that secret sauce.

“Poa trivialis is interesting in that it really grows upright, whereas most grasses grow a bit more laterally,” he said. “With Poa triv (ialis), you’ll actually get grain from the mower. As the mower goes over, it lays it in one direction and then as the mower comes back, it lays it in the other direction. We came up with a process of using these little brushes on the mowers, and now we’ll actually mow against the grain, or, against the previous line. We’re trying to make the grass stand up straight everywhere.”

During the tournament, Putnam and his staff will stimp the greens both morning and afternoon, to ensure they’re not getting too fast.

“But I do want to be able to roll the greens every day,” he said, “because with the pins staying in the same place, there’s a lot of foot-printing around the hole.”

While Putnam appreciates the yearly accolades from the PGA professionals, he’s fast to acknowledge that the pristine conditions aren’t unique to just La Quinta Country Club but to a number of the desert’s 120 courses.

“There are a half-dozen courses out here in the valley whose greens are as good as mine,” he said. “And, for an entire area, the courses out here in our desert are in as good or better shape than anywhere in the country.”

Of course, Putnam is equally aware that the eyes of the nation are annually affixed on his terrain, expecting to view the perfect roll.

“When you see a close-up of a putt on TV, and the ball starts to slow down, I want to see it tracking on that same arc,” Putnam said. “That’s when I know I’ve got these greens going really good.”