Lilman I looked over your photos, not uncommon what you are experiencing, not is it as bad as you think. What you see is somewhat normal. The tan or dormant grass is drought dormancy, meaning the grass has gone dormant to protect itself from being too dry. It is too dry because it has no roots to speak of to pull water up from the sub soil, and because you have not been keeping it watered enough for the local conditions. If it has been rather warm and windy will suk the moisture right out of the sod even though you have been watering lightly twice a day. Up the water as it is almost impossible to over water new Bermuda sod. You may have to water lightly 4 to 6 times a day. What I suggest is give it a good thorough soaking asap so as to make the ground a bit on the soggy side, then water enough each day to keep the sod good and moist without any standing water. Then when it greens up apply a good balanced fertilizer like 15-10-5 or even some ole fashion 10-20-10 to accelerate root development and start weening off the water. Just be patient and it will be nice thick and green in a couple short weeks. As long as the grass is tan or straw colored you still have live grass. Black or grey is dead.

I've been growing and maintaining Bermuda, St. Augustine, and other grass on my own since about 1961 so I'm not totally inexperienced. I know that tx weed has a sod farm. That also means he has good soil, equipment, irrigation, and time to handle anything nature can throw at him. The average homeowner usually has marginal soil, sometimes very little irrigating capability, little time, and can't always mow often enough. Mowing Bermuda at less than one inch in this 95 degree heat will leave your yard brown.....unless you have almost perfect soil, great irrigation, and can mow and fertilize it often enough. I was mowing my Bermuda yard with a 9 foot Jacobsen reel type fairway mower earlier this year at about 7/8" and needed to mow everyday. I was cutting off a half inch or more everyday. If I waited several days I'd have to use a rotary mower and then the fairway mower because the grass was growing so fast. The best way to help your grass survive this heat wave is to raise the mowing height some, water often, mow often so as to not chop too much off at once.

Steamside, Tifsport is a very high-end Bermuda grass, thus requires very high-end maintenance. It is just one-step short of a golf green quality. It can be used as a golf green in lower end courses. Its main use is as fairways, tee-boxes, sports fields, museums, commercial properties, and high-end residential Tifsport needs to be kept between 5/16 and ¾ inches using a reel mower. It is such a dense grass going any higher will cause it to thin and yellow. Sound familiar? So it needs to be mowed three times a week just like a golf course. You can stair-step it down if you wish, but get aggressive about it. Another source of the yellowing is you are starving the grass to death. Tifsport is a very aggressive feeder and almost impossible to over fertilize. If you laid it in May, have not fertilized, you are behind 2 or 3 applications already. So waiting to the end of August is just asking for terrible looking grass and weeds. You have a few options for fertilizing: Apply ¼ application of fast release every week. Apply ½ application rate of fast release every 2-weeks. Apply full application of slow release every 30 days using what is called 75% sow release, 25% fast release. OK here is what the slow/fast urea and nitrate mean. Commercial fertilizers are made from two sources, Urea and Ammonia Nitrate. Fast release formulas can be either Urea or Ammonia Nitrate. Most professionals prefer Urea because it is an organic compound and does not contribute to salinity of the soil like nitrate does. Slow release formulas are mostly formulated from urea by coating it with sulfur compounds to slow down the release of nitrogen dissolving with water. So when I say 75/25 or some other ratio I mean 75% slow release and 25% fast release. The fast release works as soon as water is applied and last about a week, while the slow release carries you though for a few more weeks. Since you live in Atlanta, locate your nearest Lesco dealer. Lesco is a professional lawn care chain that carries fertilizers custom blended for your specific area. Right now you want to be using a nitrogen only product like 000777 (29-0-0). Cone either this fall or next spring you will want to use a complete fertilizer like 15-5-10 or 20-5-10 for one application only each year.. Welcome to high-end lawn care, hope you know what you got yourself into.

Reread the Bermuda Bible. It has the details for fertilizer, when, how much, and how often. It also covers watering and mowing height and frequency. After you fertilize all you have to do is wash the fertilizer off the grass blades and down into the soil. That should be enough water to mostly dissolve the fertilizer. What you don't want to do is let the dry fertilizer sit on the grass until the following day. Problems come right away when dew only partially dissolves the fertilizer and burns the grass blades and roots. I've never seen the Lesco fertilizers recommended in the BB at Lowe's or HD in San Antonio. Austin may be different. Tractor Supply supposedly carries the exact products (never been there). They are all around Austin. Call first. If you want to try to get the same results with organics, try applying corn GLUTEN meal at a rate of 30 pounds per 1,000 square feet every month. The first time I would apply at 10 pounds. Second month at 20 and bump it up to 30 for the third app. Why? Because that will build your soil microbe population and eliminate some of the sour smell of corn decomposition. If you dumped all 30 pounds the first time you may regret it. That smell is to be avoided because it is wasting the valuable nitrogen in the corn gluten meal. Better to bring up the microbes to handle it and avoid the waste.