ROLLING OUT THE GREEN: GOLF COURSES REPLACING FAIRWAYS

JACKSON -- The fairway on the fifth hole at Bent Creek Golf Course Thursday looked and felt like a mission to lay carpet on the sun. In 95-degree heat and stupefying humidity, nine men framed by geysers of sprinkler water from nearby Spring Lake were cutting and fitting strips of sod.

Each day for the past week, six to eight tractor trailer rigs carrying a cargo of precious zoysia sod have left Little Rock, Ark., rolling through the night to the golf course. Each morning, the workers begin laying the first of 6,000 yards of turf that will be in place by the time the sun sets.

The golf course is replacing the Bermuda and the overseeded rye grass in its fairways with zoysia, a type of grass golfers love because the firm and wiry blades make golf balls sit up as if on a tee.

"This grass is the ultimate playing surface," said a dust-covered Rob Litzelfelner, one of the golf course's co-owners.

Zoysia also is much more tolerant of the cold than Bermuda is.

A hard freeze last winter and frosty mornings that continued into March and April played havoc with Bermuda fairways in the region. Each golf course has chosen its own solution.

The Cape Girardeau Country Club has closed its back nine holes for a couple of weeks to bring in a strain of Bermuda that is more tolerant and aggressive than the common Bermuda in the course's fairways.

Kimbeland Country Club in Jackson is putting 10,000 yards of zoysia sod on three of its fairways and has plans to resod three more.

The Jaycee Municipal Golf Course in Cape Girardeau has had some trouble with its fairways this year and has reseeded the number 10 fairway completely.

Those were among the choices Bent Creek had, but the owners decided to take the biggest step of all.

Litzelfelner said the golf course has had to replace its fairways three times since opening in 1990. "We were spending every spring sweating it out," he said.

All the golf course's teeing grounds are being switched to zoysia as well.

The work occurring now only followed a painstaking preparation which required the soil to be aerified twice, the old grass to be peeled off and hauled away and fertilizer applied.

The cost is high. How high Litzelfelner prefers not to say, but the expense of installing zoysia was one of the reasons the Litzelfelner family who owns Bent Creek put in Bermuda in the first place.

By most accounts, zoysia is the perfect grass for Southeast Missouri, which is in what is known as a transition zone. Bermuda struggles with cold and ice but thrives in the South. Zoysia will turn brown in the winter but rarely dies.

The front nine holes at Bent Creek are expected to reopen in time for the Jackson High School Booster Club tournament July 30. Also upcoming is the course's annual three-person scramble tournament.

Resodding the back nine will be undertaken sometime after the course's biggest outing of the year, the St. Francis Medical Center benefit at the end of August.

The Litzelfelner family struggled with the timing of the project once they realized something had to be done. Waiting until the fall would have meant waiting until spring for the grass to begin growing in.

"By the end of the season this will be really nice," Litzelfelner said.