Palm Springs area golf course making switch to new Bermuda grass for base turf

USA Today

25-06-2025

It has been 20 years since most of the initial construction work was done on the 18-hole golf course at SilverRock Resort and 19 years since SilverRock made its debut in the rotation of The American Express PGA Tour event in La Quinta.
That seems a suitable time for the course to require a bit of a facelift. That's exactly what is happening at the city-owned course, where half of the course will be closed for most of the summer.
The front nine of the course was closed in May to begin the process of swapping out the old TifSport Bermuda grass planted on the course two decades ago, said SilverRock general manager Randy Duncan.
'It just hasn't been as good a grass as we'd like,' Duncan said of the previous turf. 'It didn't like to get overseeded on top of it, and it was slow to transition. It was starting to impact our overseeding quality because we weren't able to get full coverage of Bermuda grass going into the fall.'
In search of a new base turf for the course, SilverRock, which left The American Express rotation after the 2011 tournament, turned one of its holes into a laboratory in 2024.
'Last summer we took the fifth hole and we experimented with three different varieties of Bermuda grass,' Duncan said. 'We wanted to see how they would do through the season. And we did not overseed any of them. We concluded that Latitude 36 was the best variety of grass for us.'
Developed at Oklahoma State University, Latitude 36 is known for both its drought tolerance as well as a resistance to wear from play and carts.
Starting last month, crews at SilverRock began to remove the old TifSport turf throughout the golf course, with plans to hydroseed the new Latitude 36 turf this month. That process included removing tons of grass and dirt from the property. After the dirt was removed, crews worked to shape the fairways back to the original slopes and hills, since removing the old turf with what Duncan calls 'a pulverizer' causes some natural changes to the ground.
With such a large project, Duncan said it made sense to tackle some other issues on the front nine. That includes some small things, like laser-leveling the tees on the front nine.
'We also took that opportunity to go in and smooth out the transitions from cart paths to fairways,' Duncan said. 'Over 20 years, we get a buildup of six to eight inches from cart paths to fairways. We went in and took the opportunity to smooth a lot of those out and re-did a lot of the fingers coming into our bunker faces so we have easier access to the bunkers. And we got the greens back to their original size.'
It is the green surface where SilverRock is joining dozens of other courses by bringing MiniVerde, a Bermuda grass with a small blade, to the putting surfaces. One reason SilverRock likes MiniVerde, like other courses in the desert, is the idea that MiniVerde might not need to be overseeded with cool-weather grasses like ryegrass to maintain a green color in the winter.
'That's kind of where I want to go, to eventually be in a position where we may not have to overseed down the road,' Duncan said.
For now, golfers wanting to play 18 holes at SilverRock get two trips around the back nine. With most of the work already done at SilverRock, the rest of the summer will be allowing the new Latitude 36 Bermuda base to grow in. Duncan said the plan is to reopen the front nine in mid-August, then shut down the course for a traditional overseeding around the start of October.
'So we've got the front nine, doing that this summer, and assuming city council will approve us to do the back nine, we will do the back nine next summer,' Duncan said. 'So we will be fully re-grassed by the end of summer 2026, front and back nine.'