turfRad and Hokulia Join Forces to Produce Outstanding Playability and Water Conservation Results

Hokulia is a sprawling golf club that spans three miles along the Kona coastline of Hawaii’s big island. The Signature Nicklaus Design effortlessly meanders the rocky coast while respecting tribal landmarks that can be seen throughout the property.

In 2023, Mike Stevens took over as Superintendent at Hokulia and has faced many unique challenges when it comes to managing this expansive property. One of the most ambitious was providing better playing conditions and water conservation practices. Mr. Stevens might have been new to the position but wasn’t new to the property. As an assistant, he knew the course had been plagued with soft fairways and areas with diffcult-to-maintain turf, and when looking down the fairways, it was a sea of green hues stitched together like a patchwork quilt.
Mike Stevens and the new general manager, Barry Bevers, believed that the root cause dealt with managing water.
Looking to confirm this, the Club invested in the turfRad system in the Summer of 2023 to provide precision moisture maps every time fairways were mowed.

Passive L-band Microwaves

Mike mounted the turfRad sensors on each of his fairway units, and as they mowed, the sensors collected moisture within the top four inches of soil using passive L-Band microwaves. This technology allows the sensors to gather over 150,000 moisture measurements per 18 hole run without being hindered by the speed of the vehicle, weather conditions, or lighting. Once the sensors return to the maintenance shop, the data is uploaded and displayed in ASB taskTracker’s Golf Course Maintenance platform.
Mike can then easily view maps to pinpoint wet and dry areas on the course. He also overlays his existing irrigation as-builts to receive alerts on heads needing adjustment for the next watering cycle.

In the first month of use, the results were astonishing. Mike evaluated his success on several tangible benchmarks:

Playability

First was playability. At the beginning of use, Mike would watch members hit their drives off certain holes and note how the ball was bouncing and rolling. After a month of use, he repeated the tests and noticed significantly more bounce and rollout.
Some members were touting they had picked up 30 yards of increased roll on some of the fairways.

Water Conservation

Second was water conservation. Of course, members loved having three fewer clubs into a green, but how much water was being saved, and was it meaningful? The result surprised Mike. Before using turfRad, Mike took flow readings from his Rainbird irrigation software. After a month of fine-tuning his irrigation with the turfRad solution, he reran the test and discovered he had reduced his water usage by 24%, which equates to 32 million gallons of fresh water saved per year – just on fairways.

Turf Health

The last fortuitous outcome came in the way of color uniformity. The fairway color started to even out and became much more consistent when looking down a fairway. Areas that had struggled to retain grass were now thriving.
Mike is excited for what is yet to come as he still has adjustments to make on the fairways. Once those are dialed in, he will turn his attention to greens and tees.