AbstractTo avoid the use of pesticides on putting greens of golf courses, a temperature regulator system is strongly recommended nowadays in Japan. To maintain grass on the putting green without pesticide, the temperature of the ground should be controlled. This system consists of a cooling machine and buried pipes in the ground. The temperature of the water in the pipes cannot be regulated. In this paper, both identification and control problems are presented by the minimization technique and applied to a practical problem. To establish the system, it is important to obtain accurate parameters which are included in the governing equation. These parameters can be determined by parameter identification. The conjugate gradient method is used for the parameter identification procedure. The control problem aims to make the temperature at arbitrary points close to the objective temperature. The discrete‐time dynamic programming is used for the control procedur