Hard Rock Stadium field condition updates | Page 4 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

Hard Rock Stadium field condition updates

Artificial turf is still better than the baseball diamond we used to deal with. Fake grass is much better than packed dirt!

---------- Post added at 07:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:45 AM ----------
NaboCane said:
Should've gone with the same turf they use in Foxboro from day one. That stuff is safe, and it's durable.

But nooooooo...

That turf we have is gonna look like a dirty diaper by season's end, and it'll play like **** too.
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Weather is significantly different between NE and Florida. You can't grow the same kind of grass.
 
That's a ton of money and effort to keep replacing the grass all season. I love real grass but I wonder if it's feasible with the new stadium design ... or if the design has no impact ... what is impacting the grass? I don't remember this severity of a problem in past seasons. Am I wrong? I hope Miami can figure it out and keep the grass field.
 
matt11390 said:
That's a ton of money and effort to keep replacing the grass all season. I love real grass but I wonder if it's feasible with the new stadium design ... or if the design has no impact ... what is impacting the grass? I don't remember this severity of a problem in past seasons. Am I wrong? I hope Miami can figure it out and keep the grass field.
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i'm no gardener but im sure the partial enclosure doesn't help with the sun...
 
I think their two years of research didn't help them select the right type of grass or they just didn't give it enough time to establish a strong root system.

The genetically-enhanced Platinum TE Paspalum turf installed this week was the result of nearly two years of research into determining the most workable grass for a safe and durable field for football that will hold up to the impediments imposed by the new shade canopy covering the stands.

Shielding fans from sun and rain is at odds with maintaining a lush, natural-grass field.

The canopy that has been installed to cover about 92 percent of the seats will block portions of the field from receiving optimal amount of sunlight needed for the Bermuda grass that was used in the past.

"It was very much a science project," said Todd Boyan, the Dolphins' senior vice president of stadium operations, who worked with the stadium grounds crew on testing a number of different grasses under limited-light conditions as well as augmented by grow lights.

"It's wonderful that we have the ability to have the shade, because it will certainly make the fan experience a comfortable one in the seating bowl. We wanted to keep a natural-grass field. From a technical standpoint, there was a lot of work that went in behind the scenes to see which grass made the most sense."

The Platinum TE strain of Paspalum, more expensive than the Bermuda grass, was developed to tolerate shade and withstand the traffic of sports activity.


Available for less than 10 years, it has been most widely applied to golf courses throughout the world. It has been used successfully at Marlins Park since 2014 after two varieties of Bermuda grass didn't cut it, so to speak, due to light limitations with the retractable roof.

"For us it's been by far the most successful one," Claude Delorme, Marlins executive vice president of operations and events, said of the switch to Paspalum. "It's been a significant change since we did that. The first two years it was our No. 1 issue with the ballpark, the condition of the sod and adapting to the shade resistance."

Football is tougher on any grass field than baseball or golf, particularly in a stadium shared by the Dolphins and the University of Miami. The Dolphins' stadium will be the first in the NFL with Platinum TE.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/miami-dolphins/fl-dolphins-stadium-turf-0805-20160804-story.html
 
The field gets very little direct sunlight during the day. This turf is supposed to be tough and can handle the low light but it seems to be having issues doing so. They have grow lamps, which some of the Euro soccer teams use in their stadiums, but those aren't doing the assist job they were intended for. However, even the parts that get sun, the visitors sideline, are having issues after about 3 weeks of everything dying off.
 
Perhaps part of the problem is the grass not having enough time to take root and get strong. Let it grow over the offseason and lets see how it holds next season
 
matt11390 said:
Perhaps part of the problem is the grass not having enough time to take root and get strong. Let it grow over the offseason and lets see how it holds next season
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I could see that being true if the issue was the turf being ripped up during games, etc, but it just literally seems to be dying...even in the low-traffic area of the sidelines.
 
I don't know exactly if this is all stuff the team expected they would deal with turf wise or not, but I certainly appreciate the fact that our owner is spending a good chunk of change making sure the turf looks good and is in as good as shape as possible. Tennessee's field looked like garbage last night.
 
Heisenphin said:
The field gets very little direct sunlight during the day. This turf is supposed to be tough and can handle the low light but it seems to be having issues doing so. They have grow lamps, which some of the Euro soccer teams use in their stadiums, but those aren't doing the assist job they were intended for. However, even the parts that get sun, the visitors sideline, are having issues after about 3 weeks of everything dying off.
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Yes, it seems to be more of an issues with the new grass being used and not performing as they expected.
Before the canopy, the visitor's side was in the sun and it still is now, but the grass there is now dying.
So, the only thing different there is the new grass.

Now, "why is it dying" is the real question and can it be reasonably resolved by rooting stronger off season, etc.
 
Ajayi likes the turf just the way it is thank you. Don't **** with it.
 
The turf that that I referred to, in Foxboro, is a very high-quality, attractive artificial surface about which no one has any complaints.

Harking back to the bad old days of the dirt infield; imagine how many injuries caused by that surface would have been avoided had we gone to a high-quality artificial turf then. In fact, ALL of them.
 
Right now; turn on the GB-ATL game on Fox. Look at that gorgeous turf in the Georgia Dome. No one is complaining about it being this nor that, nor is anyone being injured because of the turf.
 
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