Riviera, the storied golf club in the heart of Los Angeles, is special \u2014\u00a0not only because it has hosted some of golf\u2019s biggest tournaments (and stars) but also for reasons you might not have considered.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur property is down in the bottom of this canyon; it\u2019s basically an old dry-wash riverbed,\u201d Marshall Dick, the club\u2019s superintendent. \u201cOur general philosophy here is to nurture, enhance and perfect what wants to naturally grow within this canyon, because it\u2019s a unique environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahead of this week\u2019s U.S. Women\u2019s Open<\/a> \u2014\u00a0the first-ever at Riviera \u2014\u00a0GOLF visited with the club\u2019s agronomy team<\/a> to learn more about what they do onsite and how they are preparing for the biggest women\u2019s event of the year.<\/p>\n And it all starts with one word: Kikuya, which is a rare grass that grows on the course\u2019s fairways and rough. (The greens are Poa annua.)<\/p>\n Dick said Kikuya is still considered a \u201cnoxious weed\u201d in most parts of the country and you need special permitting to bring the seed into the U.S. But at Riviera?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s our turf grass,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As for your next question: What is Kikuya? Assistant super Tyler Shuman explains:<\/p>\n \u201cKikuya kind of came in naturally. It grows here \u2026 and the climate has kinda embraced it, and so have we. It\u2019s definitely a different beast,\u201d he said. \u201cKikuya can be hardy, but it can be affected pretty easily too. Timing and the type of year will change things. When we have the PGA Tour event in February, it kind of wants to shut down and go to sleep with the cooler temperatures. In the summer months, it becomes more of a spongy, hardy material.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t look as thick as it is,\u201d added Alexa Moncada, a senior agronomist on the Riviera staff. \u201cYou get your ball in there and you can be 200 yards out \u2014 you\u2019re not getting a fairway wood out of there. It\u2019s tough. People might even compare it to fescue. It\u2019s thick, and your ball just kind of sinks. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s as challenging in the short cut, but the rough is tough \u2014\u00a0you can\u2019t really get it out.\u201d<\/p>\n For more on what it was like on-site with the Riviera team, how they manage their unique grass and to learn about the tech-infused GS3 ball they use to monitor their greens, check out the video above or below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riviera, the storied golf club in the heart of Los Angeles, is special \u2014\u00a0not only because it has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-715490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}