Recapturing

Starting with the bunker renovation in 2012-2013, we have been working very hard to keep all of our renovation projects consistent with the goal of recapturing the vintage allure of the golf course which dates back to the golden age of golf architecture.  The golden age of golf architecture is basically that period between 1910 and 1937 when most of the top 100 golf courses in America were built. Tacoma's American Lake course opened in 1906, but it was the great renovation of 1923 that resulted in the playing field that we enjoy today. In the last 100 years, there's been a few major construction projects, but the bones of the golf course are still much like they were in the beginning.  With that said there are still some things that have changed just simply because it's hard to stop change.  These are the changes that are happening right before our eyes, but they happen so slow that many people never notice they're happening at all.  A good example of this is the growth of the trees.  It literally can take generations before a tree causes problems.  Of course now that Tacoma is well over 100 years old, there are many trees that are causing problems, and that is something we're addressing today.  Another problem that occurs slowly over time is edge migration.  The edges of bunkers migrate (see my post about this CLICK HERE), and so do the edges of putting greens.  With respect to the putting greens we've been working hard to recapture lost putting surface and also push greens out to create new areas.  In order to do this we first remove the collar dams, or "build up" of topdressing sand around the greens perimeter (CLICK HERE to read more about collar dam removal).  Once the excess sand is removed and the grass is put back, we can then start mowing the green out to where we want it.  Here's a series of pictures for this process which we recently completed on the 2nd green.

The first thing we do is paint out where we want the finished green edge to be.  This gives us a good idea of how much of the perimeter we need to strip off in order to achieve this new green shape.  

The next step is to cut the grass with a sod cutter and then roll it up and set it aside. 

Here you see the grass has been put back, the edge is repainted and we've started mowing the new green areas.   It takes several months to train the grass down to the shorter mowing height.  It takes maybe a year or so of regular mowing and topdressing before the new areas are good and smooth.  

We've completed this process on 14 greens so far and the new green shapes have created many interesting conversations.  The new green shapes have many straight edges and corners with an overall squarish look.  Many folks have said they aren't too keen on the new look and many folks say they love it.  Well let's just say the new look is really an old look, and very much consistent with the original golf course in 1906 (click HERE for a map of the first course at the American Lake site), and also after the great redesign in 1923 (Click HERE to see a map of the course after the 1923 redesign).   You can still find squarish looking greens at some of the greatest clubs in America like at Chicago GC (Click HERE), but many of those great old clubs have had renovations to their greens, and the vintage look became less fashionable.  Most recently, several golf courses have undergone renovations with an emphasis on restoration.  Like us, they are trying to recapture the vintage allure, and the brilliance of some of the great golf course architects of the past.  There's no better example of this than what we just saw this past year at the U.S. Open hosted by Winged Foot.  Click HERE to see a great blog post on this project.  Also, click HERE to see some great stuff put out by the USGA on this very subject.  Interestingly, Winged Foot was built in 1923, the same year Tacoma unveiled it's newly renovated golf course which is essentially the same golf course we enjoy today.  

The Bogey score

Ever since we restored the original teeing grounds on holes 6 and 18, we've used some simple signs to help players know which set of tees are being used for that days play.  This spring I put out some new signs (the old signs were awkward to move around) and enough of you have commented on them that I figure it's time for an explanation as to what's written on them.  For example the sign on 6 says that it is a bogey 3, but people keep asking me why it isn't a bogey 4 since the hole is a par 3.  To answer this question we have to review the definition of the terms par and bogey.

First of all "par" is the score that a scratch golfer should make, and for the most part the par of a hole is based on it's effective length.  Today, bogey is considered one over par, but back in the day when Tacoma C&GC was founded, and golf in America was in its infancy, the bogey score was what a good player should make based on the collective agreement of the committee.  The length of a hole certainly had an influence on this decision but mostly it was based on the overall difficulty of the hole.  In other words, hazards like bunkers, water, wind, elevation and the like were considered when the bogey score was calculated.  Check out our scorecard from 1925, you can see that each hole had a par and a bogey score.  The par for the course was 72 and the bogey score for the course was 81.    

To make things more interesting, the bogey score was considered that which was played by a fictitious person named colonel bogey or the bogey man.  It was commonly said that you beat the colonel, or the bogey man if you bested the bogey score.  Since the "good old days" golf course rating with the addition of slope-rating has become a very standardized measure of a golf course's difficulty, and the bogey score as originally intended has mostly become nonexistent. Ironically, the bogey score as originally intended is a much better target score for most of us.  I mean seriously, most of us will never beat par.  If we go out there with the goal to beat par, we will spend much of our golfing days feeling very defeated.  That's why I'm putting the bogey score on the course signage.  We all have different abilities but we all want to have fun. Getting beat up by chasing par is not near as fun as beating up on the Colonel.  If you want to read some more about the history of par and bogey click HERE, or click HERE

The Irrigation System-History

You may have heard that we're making plans for a new golf course irrigation system.  This is certainly a major project and I'm sure people have many questions about it.  Beginning with this blog post I'm going to make a series of posts on the subject which I hope will answer these questions.  This post is a history lesson.  To understand where we're heading, it's important to understand where we've been.  Tacoma is one of the oldest golf clubs in the country so I think you might find the history of it's irrigation system pretty interesting. 

This picture was taken sometime after the American Lake course opened in 1905 and sometime before the installation of the first irrigation system in 1923.  Golf in those days was played during fall, winter and spring since the golf course wasn't very playable during the summer months.  Without rain the prairie soils where too hard and rocky for golf.  The idea of "year-around golf" at Tacoma was realized with the advancements in irrigation technology.  The first underground irrigation system at Tacoma was installed in 1923 using wood stave pipe (Click HERE for some really cool images of wood stave pipe).  Below is an image of the 1923 "as built" for that system.  Click HERE to download it if you'd like to take a closer look at the entire map.

 Notice there is no pipe in the fairways.   The system worked by delivering water to a series of spigots where a greenkeeper would attach a watering device like the TORO serpent (see below).

The source of the water was American Lake but water was pumped up to a water tower and gravity provided the power to pressurize the pipe line.  Check out this 1946 picture of the Club and you can see the tall water tower near the clubhouse and lake shore.

This wood pipe system was in operation for 30 years and I can tell you that it probably wasn't replaced because the wood pipe went bad.  We have uncovered a lot of this wood pipe over the years and the stuff is still in very good condition and very difficult to break or cut. Here's a pic of some of this pipe that we unearthed during the 2013 bunker renovation.

The wood pipe was good pipe but it's one big limitation was the inability to handle high pressure.  You can imagine that in the 30 years this system was in operation considerable advancements were made in irrigation technology.  Specifically, the ability to pump water efficiently and reliably revolutionized irrigation.  In 1953 the Club installed a new system with pipe that could handle higher pressure and power the newer sprinklers.  Below is an image of the "as built" for that system.  Click HERE to download the entire image if you want to take a closer look.

Notice now with this system the pipe is right down the middle of the fairways and around every green.  This system utilized high pressure sprinklers which could throw water 100 feet or essentially the entire width of each fairway.  This was a manual system meaning that each sprinkler had to be started and stopped by hand, thus these were the days of the night waterperson.  The night waterperson was that greenkeeper who came on shift in the middle of the night to set sprinklers.  Here's a 1979 aerial showing what the course looked like in the summer during those days.

The 1953 manual system clearly had some limitations.  Only the fairways were irrigated and the control over the amount of water applied was poor at best.  Still, this system served the Club for 35 years and in 1989 the Club invested in a system which was much more advanced.  That 1989 system is what we're currently running and it's completely automated with computer control.  Below is a picture of the "as built" for this system.  As you can see there is an impressive network of underground pipes and wires.  

I can run sprinklers and make adjustments from any computer remotely and even use my smart phone for most operations.  Literally every square inch of the property is irrigated.  So why are we replacing it?  That's what I'm going to explain over the next few blog posts.  Stay tuned.

The Old Course

When the grand old lady (Clubhouse 1910-1961) was taken by fire, so much was lost.  Only a handful of artifacts and documents were spared from destruction.  That means almost every historical relic from the Club's first 60+ years of existence is gone.  For this reason I get so excited when I find something significant from this period of the Club's history.  I have found some very interesting things and I've shared some of those things with you here on the blog.  Go to the right hand column of the blog and click on "history" if you want to see some of the things I've found.  Today I want to share with you my latest, and perhaps greatest find to date.  Check out this trophy that I just won in an auction on e-bay.

So yes this is a trophy presented to J. Gillison Jr. presumably when he won the Men's Club Championship in 1910.  Some of you might be saying "what about the Balfour Medal"?  Everyone knows that the Club Champion gets his name inscribed on the Balfour medal.  This is true but remember the Balfour Medal was misplaced for almost 30 years and some say it was lost in the first clubhouse fire in 1909.  Click HERE for more info on the Balfour Medal.   We don't know for sure when and how the medal was lost exactly but clearly in the absence of the medal, it appears the Club awarded this trophy at least for the year of 1910. What did the Club do for the Champion in 1911 and each year following until the Balfour Medal was recovered in 1938?  It's uncertain but I'll keep looking for those answers.  I just love digging through the internet looking for answers to those types of questions.  Something I found the other day kind of came by accident and it is really interesting.  To explain I have to backtrack a couple of years when I found an old box of stuff at the maintenance facility.  This box of stuff had lots of interesting artifacts that were kind of random and really didn't seem to come from the same time period.  The oldest things were from the 60's, but there was one blueprint of the golf course which was clearly older......much older.  Here's a picture of it.

If you would like to download it so you can look at it closely click HERE.  You will notice some very interesting things which tells you that it's very old.  First of all apparently there was a large polo field east of the railroad tracks.  I have not seen that on any other map of the area.  Also, you can see that the entry road comes in and cuts right through the old 10th and 11th holes.  I wonder how much the crossing horses and buggies interfered with the pace of play?  Along the east property line there is no Pacific Highway.  I have never seen a map of the area which did not show that there was a major road along the tracks.  This map says there is a county road along that path but it is on the Club's side of the tracks which means that is our service road today.  So anyway when I found this map I knew it was probably the oldest map of the property that I've ever seen.  The most interesting thing to me about the document is how the golf course is routed unlike any way I've ever seen.  For instance look at the first 4 holes.

Hole number 1 (which is of course is today's 10th) looks to be the same but then holes 2, 3 and 4 are completely different.  It looks like 3 consecutive par 3's.  This seemed plausible but I had never seen any evidence anywhere that supported the idea.  The oldest scorecard that I know of is from 1921 and it supports the routing which we know existed up until 1989 when the course was altered to add 3 new holes and make the two finishing holes into our practice range.  Without any supporting evidence I pretty much had to concede that the routing on this map never existed.  For all I knew, this map was just a plan that was never executed.  All I could do was scan the map to preserve it digitally and pack it away in the box where I found it.  Well now all that's changed.  Today, I know that routing did exist.  Let me explain.  In my spare time I frequently will dig through old newspapers on the internet looking at anything related to the Club (yes I'm a total golf history geek).  I have found so many interesting clippings that I now post them in the restrooms on the golf course above the urinals.  That may be weird but I saw this done in Ireland at the Island Club and thought it was a neat idea.  I made these cork boards and I try and change the clippings every couple weeks.

The other day I was posting this interesting clipping from 1911 which talked about Jim Barnes shooting some impressive scores and it mentions the distances of the holes on the way out and then on the way in.   I looked closely at the distances and sure enough, they match the routing of the course on the old map. Look for yourself, here is a close up of that section of the article.

Notice hole 2,3, and 4 are all longish par 3's.  Also check out the ninth hole which is today's 18th.  It's a monster at 580 yards.  Is it possible that that hole was a par 6?  We might never know the par of these unfamiliar holes but still this confirms the old routing and I think that's a major discovery.  Just for fun I measured all the holes on the old map and then I drew them in scale on a map of the golf course today so you can see where these old holes were.  For example, using the scale, the first hole measured at 376 yards and the tee was about where the posting computer is in the proshop today.  In the 1911 newspaper clipping, the first hole measured at 350 yards so I assume at that time the hole had been shortened to accommodate a caddy house or proshop which means the old map pre-dates 1911.  That is an assumption and I can't be sure but maybe someday I'll uncover something else that can help us make that determination.  Anyway, the old map was created by an engineer so it's very likely that the scale is accurate and we can assume that at some time the golf course was laid out exactly as the map shows.  If you click HERE, you can look at or download a map of the old routing laid out on top of today's routing.  Here's an example of what that looks like in the center of the course.

 Also, look in the bottom left and you'll see I inserted the yardages for the old routing as measured on the map.  Coincidentally, the discovery of this old course answers another question I've always had about the 6th hole.  Remember #6 green used to be off to the left of where it is today and in this old picture of the 1923 irrigation as-built you can see that the front edge of the green is at an angle facing the tee near the first green. 

 I always wondered why the green was tilted at an angle to the tee and now I know.  So in other words, the 1923 irrigation as-built also confirms that the old course did exist and that that is the course on which Jim Barnes played.   If you want to download and look at the 1923 irrigation as-built click HERE.

Playground on the Prairie

 If you haven't already heard, the Lakewood Historical Society created a marker for the Club which commemorates it's historical significance.  We recently placed it near the north end of the clubhouse.  This seems like a good spot for the marker, but the final resting place is still being discussed at the committee level.  In the mean time, take a minute to go check it out. 

Lakewood has been a city for only 20 years, yet the town and community of Lakewood, once known simply as "the prairie", has a long, interesting history.  The Lakewood Historical Society was formed in 1998 and this marker is proof that they are fulfilling their mission to identify, preserve, and perpetuate Lakewood's history. Should the Club be recognized as historically significant?  I certainly think so.  In 1894, the Club was just a golf club.  When the Club moved the shore of American Lake in 1904, it became much more.  In addition to golf, there was boating, fox hunting, polo, tennis, and shooting.  When cars came along one of the favorite pastimes was driving and the vast open space around the Club was ideal for driving.  The Club became known as the playground on the prairie, and of course not everyone could afford this leisure.  It became the destination for Tacoma's upper crust of society.  All the movers and shakers joined the Club.  These were the people that started industry which provided the jobs.  These were the people that shaped and built Tacoma and the surrounding communities like Lakewood.  Yes, the Club is certainly significant to Lakewood's history.  As one of the first golf clubs in America, it is in fact historically significant at a national level.  Let's never forget that.  This historical marker certainly belongs here.  If you would like to see the other Lakewood historical markers, click HERE to see a list of them.  If you want to know more about Lakewood's history, check out the Lakewood Historical Society's website HERE.

"The West Home of Golf"

I'm sure other golf clubs in America have ties to St Andrews in Scotland but Tacoma C&GC has some direct ties, and this week with the OPEN Championship being held at the "home of golf", it's a great time to recognize the connection between these two historic golf clubs.  The founder of Tacoma C&GC was Alexander Baillie.  He was a graduate from the University Of St Andrews and after receiving his diploma became an aspiring employee of the Balfour-Guthrie Shipping company.  Recognizing his potential, the company sent the young lad to America at the age of 21 to start a branch on the West Coast.  In his new office he managed some 30 persons and half of them were homesick Scots like himself and many of them were also graduates of Saint Andrews University.  Baillie felt he could relieve some of their homesickness if he could establish in Tacoma the game so many of them had played in Scotland.  So in 1894 he obtained a 5-year lease on 280 acres in south Tacoma and organized the Tacoma Golf Club, the first permanent Club in the Northwest.  The Club grew and in 1896 Sir Robert Balfour of the Balfour-Guthrie firm visited Tacoma. Sir Robert was an ardent golfer and was so impressed with what Baillie had started that upon his return to Scotland he had a gold Saint Andrews medal made for the Tacoma Golf Club.  It is called simply the Balfour Medal.

photo by Dean Minor

This was placed in competition for the first time on Jan. 1st 1898.  It has been a treasured possession of the Club ever since, even though it was misplaced in 1910 and not found until 1938.  Once recovered, it was decided the medal would be awarded annually to the Club Champion which would be decided after 36 holes of match play.  That is still the case today and forever shall be.  So now you know why Tacoma C&GC awards their Club Champion a medal that bears the name of St Andrews.  It is because Tacoma, the home of golf for the west, was built by gentlemen from the one and only "home of golf ".   The Balfour medal is just another example of the historical significance of Tacoma and the game of golf.   Remember the next time you tee it up that your not just playing another old classic golf course.  When you play Tacoma, your playing golf on an antique.  You're playing "Vintage Golf".

The First 100 years

In 1994 this wonderful film was made which does a nice job of documenting the Club's first 100 years.  It's 24 minutes long so don't start it unless you have some time to sit back and enjoy.  Click on the image below to start the film and then click on the icon in the bottom right corner in order to watch it in "full screen".

The "Tee Box"

If you've been out to the practice range lately, you might notice this new box, and you're probably asking yourself why is it there, and what is it for?  If you open it, you'll notice it has tees in it.  Yes these tees are for your use.  You might notice they are used tees.  Yes we are recycling used, unbroken tees which we pick up every morning as we set up the range tee area.  Check out this picture of the bucket which sits in front of the cart we use for course set up each day.  

Believe it or not this full bucket of tees is what we picked up off the range tee in one month.  Many of these tees are unbroken and perfectly good so in the interest of generating less waste, we have picked out the unbroken tees so that they can be used again.  So please feel free to use the tees in the new box.  Once all the tees are gone we will probably remove the box until we have picked up a large number of used tees again at which time we will bring the box back up so that they can be recycled.

So now if your wondering why the box says "Hole 6" and "bogey 3".............then keep reading.

By the way, Jim the clubhouse maintenance guy built this box for me, and I just have to say we are very lucky to have Jim at the Club.  He is so talented and knows just about everything about everything.  Not only that, Jim is just a great guy.  Anyway, the box is modeled after the one in this picture which was taken at the Club sometime in the 40's or 50's.  Not really sure.

I've always loved this picture of 3 young ladies in front of what we call the "Grand Old Lady" (clubhouse 1910-1962).  Anyway, the box in the picture looks like it was pretty old at the time and may have at one time served as a box for making sand tees.   Okay maybe you didn't know this but ...... before the invention of the wood tee, balls were teed up on little heaps of sand which was provided on each tee in a box.  Here's a great picture of Harry Vardon teeing off next to one of these boxes.

This next pic was taken at Tacoma during the same period and you can see the tee box is pretty small and more simple.

I love how the first two boxes I showed you also served as tee signs.  Notice both of those examples  display the hole number, hole yardage, and hole par or bogey.  So now you may be asking yourself why would you display a holes bogey score?  Here in lies yet another history lesson for some of you.  Check out this picture of Tacoma's 1925 scorecard.

On the right side of the left column you can see there is par and bogey for each hole.  At the top of the card you can see that the par for the course is 72 and the bogey is 81.  You see in those days the term "bogey" had a different meaning.  Originally, the term "bogey" was the ideal target score that an amateur would achieve, in the same way that par eventually became the ideal target score for professionals.  It is now most commonly used to denote a score of one stroke over par, however many golf courses to this day have separate bogey scores for their holes, some may be par and some may be one over par.  In those days, the bogey score was kind of a measure of the courses difficulty.  If you could beat the bogey score, you had a good round.  So anyway, some golf historians would say that these boxes on the tees in the early days is where the term "tee box" got its start.  I'm not so sure.  Looks at these next few pictures of golfers teeing off during the early years at Tacoma.

This is before they had multiple teeing grounds.  When the course was first laid out, everyone teed off from the same spot, regardless of your skill level.  You can imagine growing good turf on a teeing ground would be very difficult if everyone stood in the same spot, not to mention that at that time there was no irrigation either.

So people teed off from these boxes.  Half of the box was a area to stand on with some sort of mat or carpet maybe.  The other half of the box was a sandy soil where you would just grab some sand and heap it up for a tee.  I think that these boxes where people hit from might be where the term "tee box" came from.  I'm hoping that some golf historian might read this and let me know which tee box came first.

This picture shows a lady teeing off of a tee box next to a tee box.  Notice these great old pictures clearly show that the original golf course property was really an open prairie.

This guy was really crushing the ball off the tee box.

In this picture, you can see the sand tee disintegrated upon impact from the golf club swung by a very appropriately
dressed lady golfer.



















So anyway, back to the tee box on the range.  I originally had it built so that people could try making sand tees to hit off, just for fun.   My intention was to set it out on #6 so that is why it has "Hole 6" displayed on it.  I also selected hole #6 because I thought it was pretty neat that it is a par 3 and also a bogey 3 at the same time.  The only reason I haven't followed through with putting out the box on hole #6 is that I am having a very hard time finding an inexpensive sand tee mold.  Here's a couple of examples of a sand tee mold.

These little babies where used to make the sand tees and it is kind of hard to find replicas of them.  Authentic sand tee molds are really expensive.  Who know, maybe some time I will find some inexpensive replicas that I can put out on the course so we all can try to hit off an actual sand tee, just like they did here 100 years ago.

Big House on the Prairie

 Above you see a nice picture of the "Grand Old Lady" as she looked just after the official opening which was held October 8th, 1910.  This picture, with the caption, is from the book "Tacoma, the city with a snow-capped mountain in it's dooryard".  That book was published in 1912 and it is a very interesting record of Tacoma's rapid growth during the early years.  You can read it in entirety by clicking HERE.  If you follow that link and check out the book, you're bound to learn something interesting about Tacoma, "the city of destiny".  If you're a golf history nerd like me, you're going to learn something really interesting about Tacoma Country and Golf Club, which is what I want to share with you now.  We need to start by reading the caption under that picture of the "grand old Lady" which is found in the book on page 31.  I know it's really hard to read that tiny print so just keep reading as the following text is an exact copy of that which is in the caption, but much easier to read retyped here.  The caption reads...........


HOME OF THE TACOMA COUNTRY AND GOLF CLUB.- On page 27 will be found three views taken on the immense gravelly prairie and fresh water lake district beginning at the southerly limits of Tacoma and extending south the length of two ordinary counties.   These views were taken in the vicinity of the splendid clubhouse of the Tacoma Country and Golf Club above illustrated, and serve to indicate, as best pictures may indicate, the interest-impelling character of the clubhouse environments.  Nowhere in the East, even in the immediate vicinity of New York or Philadelphia or Boston, will be found a country club development superior to that of the Tacoma Country and Golf Club, and this development in contra-distinction to that near the eastern cities, is possible of almost limitless extension.  The Puget Sound climate is, of course, a large determining factor to this development, for it allows the pounding of gold balls or the chasing of the annis bag from January to December.  Indeed, when the gentle rains of late autumn begin, more knickerbocker-clad enthusiasts will be seen pursuing their seemingly endless course over the links than in the sunniest days to be conjured, for no rain falls during June, July and August, yet it is never more than comfortably warm.  Golf and riding to hounds are all-the-year-around institutions in Tacoma's country club life, and visitors are always loathe to leave after once tasting the pleasures abound.  The clubhouse above is the center of but one of the developments on this prairie and along the lakes that dot its surface.
________________________________________________________

So when I first read this, I immediately flipped to page 27 to see the views of the immense gravelly prairie.  Below are the images from page 27.  You see two images of towering firs and then the larger third image is of a nice prairie dotted with young firs.  That somewhat accurately depicts the property today although the firs that once dotted the prairie are now much larger and unfortunately many other firs have been planted over the years making it not much like a prairie at all.  Still the same, you can go to the edge of the property near American Lake and see huge, old towering firs as in the images below, while certainly the golf course interior is much more open like that third image since the trees are younger and smaller.   

Anyway, as you continue reading the caption, clearly the author felt very highly of the Club development at the time and that's not too surprising since in 1912, golf was still young in the states and Tacoma C&GC had already cemented itself as the first Club in the west and clearly one of the best with it's glorious, new, lavish clubhouse.  I love the next statement in the caption that touts the great weather in Puget Sound.  The text says "pounding of gold balls and chasing the annis bag from January to December" ,but obviously there is a couple of typos there.  It should read of course "pounding of golf balls and chasing the anise bag from January to December".  I'm not sure a lot of people would say we have the best weather here but again you have to look at what the game of golf looked like in 1912 when this was written.  Most of the great clubs at the time were in New York, Philly, or Chicago and those areas have a definite off-season during the winter months.  On top of that, people during that period didn't necessarily feel that sunny, warm weather was good for golfing.  In fact, during the hot summer months, people took time off from golfing since the turf wasn't very good and appropriate golf attire was a coat and tie for the gentlemen and a full length dress for ladies. The turf wasn't very good since irrigation systems really hadn't been invented yet and we know the first irrigation system at Tacoma didn't come until 1923.  But anyway, you get the point that the Puget Sound climate is so mild that golf can be played all year and of course if your a golf enthusiast, this makes it an ideal region to develop a golf club.  Combine good weather with good property and you get something very special like Tacoma Country and Golf Club.  As the last sentence of the caption reiterates, the property at that time was an endless, open prairie.   Links type land  was considered ideal for golf during this period and the prairies of south Puget Sound looked strikingly similar to links land.  But now here is the tragedy in our story of the Club's history.  The prairie is virtually gone.  Check out the following diagrams which show the distribution of prairie land in the 1850s versus the 1950s. The red arrow is pointing to where Tacoma C&GC is located, the white areas are prairie, and the shaded areas are forest.

Now look at the same area in the diagram below which shows the distribution of prairie in the 1950s.

Look at where the red arrow is pointing which again is the Club's location.  You can see that it is still very much prairie but the forest is creeping in from the lakes and from the east.  Now look below at an aerial of the course in 1941 and sure enough, the course is still on an open prairie.  So you see it really isn't until recently in the last 50 years that Tacoma's course became tree lined with big fir trees.  For most of the Club's history, the course has been an open site that allowed for good turf and favorable land for the Garry Oak.

Unfortunately, the invasive Douglas Fir has been allowed to encroach on the site, and even more disturbing, the Club has actually planted Douglas Fir which has increased the speed of prairie loss.  I myself have planted firs on the course so I am also to blame for this tragedy and believe me, it makes me sad.  The founders of this great club chose this site because it was appropriate golfing land with very few trees and rolling terrain inhabited by native grasses.  Somehow over time people, including myself, lost site of the importance of open space for good golf, and now the course has become overgrown with Fir trees that have shaded out the good grasses and the beautiful endangered oak trees.  Well I have committed my life to understanding good golf, good turf, and the history of this Club so now I see clearly that whats left of the prairie needs to be preserved.  It's not too late to save the oak trees and maintain good golfing land for the future members of Tacoma C&GC.  So when you see banded trees like in this picture of the area near the second tee, don't look at it as removing fir trees.  Look at it as a preservation effort since that's exactly what it is.  The oak trees are getting choked out and the forest is creeping in.

Look at this next photo and you can see what happens when a fir tree is allowed to over top an oak tree.  This big fir snapped in half in our most recent wind storm and landed on the oak next to it.

In this next picture you can see the oak that was crushed.  Unfortunately another endangered oak tree has been lost and this could have been so easily avoided by simply not allowing that fir tree to get that large.

Look at this next picture.  I took this picture near the second tee in a dense woody area where the invasive firs have been allowed to encroach.  You see there is a young fir growing there that has just sprung up from seed.  This is the kind of thing that we have to actively manage in order to maintain some resemblance of the prairie that used to be here.  Small firs like this need to be removed before they can grow up and shade out the desirable grass and oaks.

Below is another piece of evidence that proves my point.  In this picture you see a young oak tree near the fairway on #2  that died this past winter.  Last spring I know it was alive because I was making plans to relocate it to an open area where it would have a chance to survive.  I never found time to save that oak and as you can see, it finally died a very slow death caused by shade from towering firs.

Okay so now I'm sure I've lost some readers since many of you may have just gotten bored with the length of this post or your one of those that just thinks there's no reason to ever cut down a tree.  Yes it's true this has turned into another one of Joel's posts about removing trees, and I know that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.  Hopefully some of you see that this is about saving endangered trees and preserving whats left of what makes this land so good for golf.  Please follow this link by clicking HERE and check out the website which brings awareness to the tragedy of the diminishing prairies and to those people that have committed themselves to preserving whats left of it and even reclaiming it.  You'll see that there is a video on that web page.  It's worth watching as it explains how the prairies got here, how they were maintained by natives, and how now they are being lost. 

The acreage of prairie in our area has dwindled to 3% of what it was before settlers arrived and because of that, hundreds of unique species are going to soon be extinct.   We have a chance to assist in the conservation effort to save the prairies by making sure the forest is kept at bay and the oak trees are given a chance to survive.  The great thing about spending time and money saving what's left of the prairie at Tacoma C&GC is that it also is good for golf.  You can't grow grass in a Douglas fir forest but in an oak inhabited prairie, grasses are actually the normal coverage and so that is land perfectly suited for golf and at Tacoma C&GC, good golf should be the focus.  By the way, the reference at the beginning of this post to "chasing the anise bag" goes back to the days of fox hunting which apparently was done year around during those early years.  The hounds would chase the anise bag in the absence of the fox which I'm sure got increasingly more common as the fox was hunted to near extinction.