You have the right goal in mind, deep & infrequent. You just can't rush into it. You must train your grass. I think some folks on here said it takes like 3 months or so. I can't remember who it was but it was one of the regular folks (I think). If your grass is showing signs of drought stress, water it. Don't let your grass die trying to get good roots. You have time to hit your goal.

+1 . Do what you need to do to keep it alive. Summer is not the time to build deep roots, mainly because they cease growth when soil reaches 77 degrees.

Keep an eye out for fungus. Or apply a fungicide preventively.

Let that turf get about 5 inches tall, and then cut it down to 4 inches. Make sure you recycle the clippings back into the lawn using the mulch setting in your mower. That will also help with moisture retention by creating shade to protect the crowns; the clippings themselves are almost purely water as well. Continue watering deeply and infrequently, but make sure you aren't watering too much and causing rot.

Get through the summer as best as you can. In the early fall, assess where you are. If you have some thin spots, go ahead and seed them or buy some more sod to patch. A lot of fescue sod actually has some bluegrass in it, which will spread around to thicken the thin spots.

A solid feeding schedule this fall this fall will help that turf recover and dig in for the long haul.

Couple weeks on...at this point it looks like 30%-50% is reasonably healthy and will survive, the rest is a mix of stressed but living grass and flat out dead. So...I'll be over seeding this fall. My plan is to leave the dead grass in place, to serve as mulch and erosion control, and eventual compost, and to use a power seeder to insert the seed through the dead and into the soil. Given that I have irrigation coverage I'm leaning towards an early September planting, even with aome residual warm weather. I have a lot of trees and I don't want to be in a position of having to either blow leaves off of barely-rooted seedlings, or leaving the leaves to suffocate them. Early September should also give a solid 3 months of growing before the colder weather sets in.

Any thoughts?

I would say you have to time your seeding to soil temperature, not the possibility of leaves falling. Once the seeds start to come up you could probably blow off the leaves with a blower, especially if you get to them soon and do it right before you water (so the leaves aren't super wet and heavy).

Beautiful... I loved my fescue yard in the fall when I lived up north. Couldn't give it the love it needed in the summer though, so it never got through the summer unscathed.

Wow! Where are you located?

What do you guys think about trying grass cooling, I think the technique its called just misting the grass with water in the hot parts of the day?

Greensboro NC. It still looks good but you can tell summer has taken its toll. Can't wait to seed and bring it up to par in September.

What do you guys think about trying grass cooling, I think the technique its called just misting the grass with water in the hot parts of the day?

I tried it during very hot days, because it seemed to work on other plants like hydrangeas and beans. I'm not sure how much the grass benefited from it but I did measure a lower temperature at turf level by about 10 degrees for 5-10 minutes after watering. I would do again, every little bit helps.

Hmm yeah I was working on a golf course in Arkansas The grounds master was doing it every day to his greens .... granted he was using a wetting agent on them every day also.