We continue to see more and more rounds played as golf is now the most popular pastime. I've never seen so many people on the golf course, especially now during the "off season". As a consequence we are seeing some problems with wear and tear in high traffic areas. For example, on #9 green we have some thinning of the turf in the front left corner where everyone is entering and exiting.
To try and alleviate the stress on this area we put up a short set of ropes to try and encourage folks to take a slightly less direct route. Unfortunately many people do not understand what these ropes are for since I've observed many players stepping over them, essentially defeating the purpose entirely. Please do not step over the ropes. Please help us by taking a few extra steps to walk around these ropes and give that turf a little break from all the foot traffic. These ropes will not stay there forever. Once we see the turf recover a little, we will remove them. More than likely we will be placing them in a new area where we are seeing a traffic problem. Once spring arrives and the grass starts growing we will no longer need them.
Seems like just yesterday we were rebuilding all the bunkers on the golf course. The truth is our bunkers are no longer "new". Believe it or not this picture was taken nearly 6 years ago. That may or may not sound like a long time to you but lets look at it another way. If we assume the golf course sees about 15,000 rounds a year (which I think is very conservative) and just one out of ten golfers hit into this bunker on #6 (I think that is definitely conservative), then that means at least 9,000 people have played from this bunker. That means 9,000 times someone has walked into this bunker and 9,000 times someone has walked out of this bunker. Let's not forget that almost every day one of my staff walks into this bunker in order to ready it for play. Each time someone enters a bunker they take several steps around it so it's not a stretch to assume that there has been tens of thousands of steps taken around this bunker. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal to you but when I look at it this way I'm not at all surprised that some of the bunkers are looking tired and worn out. Some of the bunkers are simply bushed and need help.
Specifically, look at the edges of the bunkers. Even on steep areas like you see here, there are mashed down edges caused by people entering and exiting. These mashed down areas have become steps and are getting used as such over and over. This is starting to cause a serious problem. Balls are literally getting hung up in these areas which is a serious penalty. Bunkers are supposed to be a penalty but the incidence of "unplayable lies" is becoming way to frequent. I'm telling you all this to say that we are taking serious steps to resolve the situation. Here's a brief description of what we are doing.
The first thing we do is pull away the sand from the edge so we can get a good look at what needs to be done and also so we can set the sand aside to be used again once repairs are finished. Then we cut out the edge of the bunker so that we once again have a nice vertical face that clearly defines the hazard and hopefully permits balls to enter the bunker and roll down away from the face. Some of these cuts we're making are pretty severe but our goal is to minimize the disturbance and retain as much of the bunker's original "character" as possible.
The sand that was set aside is then raked up to the new edge. With the mashed down edges removed the bunker has a more defined look but it's a little harder of a step in and out in these areas. That's hopefully going to encourage people to enter and exit where they should which is on the low side of the bunker, but one thing I've learned is if a golfer is capable of jumping in and out over a high lip they will do so in order to reduce the disturbance of bunker sand and therefore reduce the amount of raking required after they've taken the shot. Here's a picture of how this bunker looked when we finished up repairs.
Our unique bunkers come with some unique challenges but we're also addressing a common issue that occurs on virtually all bunkers and that is "sand blast build up". This occurs from blasting out sand from repeated bunker shots. The blasted out sand can build up quickly on a bunker which sees a lot of action. There's no surprise this problem is most common on practice bunkers. Here's a couple of pictures I took this week as we removed the build up of sand on the face of our practice bunker.
Here's a familiar sight for this time of year. A thoroughly trampled bunker and some of my staff out hand watering fairways. We've been so busy trying to get caught up yet, we are just at the beginning of what's bound to be one of the busiest summers in our long history. Membership is the highest it's been in ages and today's membership is a very "golfing" membership. Don't get me wrong, nothing makes me happier than seeing golfers enjoying the playing field at Tacoma. At the same time, nothing is more frustrating than seeing some of the unnecessary damage caused by golfers which only makes the golf experience less enjoyable for everyone.
I'm not really talking about ball marks and filling fairway divots. I'm pretty sure everyone is tired of hearing the same old lecture about the proper way to fix ball marks and lets face it, some people fill divots and some people don't. So, I'm not going to talk about ball marks but if you haven't seen the video I made several years back, you should watch it since It's still very relevant today....click HERE. When it comes to filling fairway divots, we have so many people that love to fill divots that it kind of makes up for the people that don't like to fill divots.
I do want to talk about practice tee divots because it's clear that some people still don't get it. The other day I came out to see this horrific damage to the practice tee. The amount of turf consumed here could easily have been reduced 50% by simply practicing properly. Thankfully right next to this carnage was this........
...........this is a really good picture. Almost everyone that hit in this area tried to hit in strips thereby reducing the amount of turf consumed. Maybe this is obvious but I'll point out that when you consume less turf, you leave behind more turf. This means the next time you go out to hit golf balls on the practice tee, the more likely it is that you will find some nice turf. In addition, the less turf consumed, the less time and money we spend repairing the damage which means more time and money we can use elsewhere to improve your golfing experience. I understand that some people simply just don't know how to take divots properly. That's really the bottom line. It's about education. Again, if you haven't seen it, watch this video I made back when I had less gray hair......click HERE.
Lastly I need to touch on something that I haven't spoke much about, but is of growing concern. We all know Tacoma may have the best bunkering on the planet, but these bunkers are taking a beating, and it's caused by the golfers..............the one group of people that you would think "care" about the condition of the bunkers. What I'm talking about is one very basic rule of bunker etiquette, but at Tacoma this simple rule is even more important. The rule is "Enter and Exit the bunker properly".
Check out this bunker face on #9 green. Someone decided to enter the bunker or exit the bunker in this area and they collapsed the face of the bunker. Now we have a condition which needs repair. This kind of repair is something we do not have time for this time of year so it will just remain this way for quite some time. The problem is that before this damage occurred we had a bunker face which released the golf ball properly. Now we have a bunker face which may swallow up a golf ball and create an unplayable lie like in this picture.
This is a reality at Tacoma. Our bunkers are true hazards and if you play here you will find that you need to deem the ball unplayable from time to time. I call that golf. It's much more interesting and exciting golf when the price of a bad shot can be very costly. I can't stand the modern type of golf I see where being in a bunker is no penalty at all or even worse, being in a bunker is the better lie than not being in the bunker. With that said, none of us want to deem our ball unplayable. It is a very costly price to pay. Missing a green by a few feet should simply mean that more often than not, your going to have to pull off a good recovery shot to make par. I'm seeing more and more of this type of damage because people can't take that extra few seconds to use the low side of the bunker for entering and exiting. Before you know it, the unplayable lie might become the norm. None of us want that. Please people, enter and exit properly! Enter and exit at the low side of the bunker.
The new bunkers continue to be the topic of many discussions around the Club. Everyone just loves the way they look but when you ask if they like the way they play, the positive comments are not anywhere near as unanimous. We have been looking hard at various types of rakes and various types of raking styles with the objective to make the condition of the sand firmer. What we're doing now might surprise you as our general philosophy has become "do as little as possible". We have found that the best way to achieve consistent and firm sand conditions is to just stop raking them all together since it's the raking of them that tills the sand and makes them play soft. So now we are adopting a new method we like to call "SMEARING".
In the picture above you see that the bunker rake is actually flipped upside down and the sand is smeared to look smooth, almost like spreading butter on toast. Also look at this picture and you see that the steep face is left as it was found since it hasn't been disturbed at all. Now that we've been doing this a while, the bunkers have gotten smoother each day and firmer since there is very little sand disturbed with this process. I was concerned about how this technique would make the bunkers look, but it actually has worked out fine and people have even complemented me on the look. Bottom line is play-ability is the most important thing and this new method is working well in that regard. Balls are not plugging, or getting hung up on faces.
Here's a little video showing the smearing method in action. By the way, you too can smear the bunkers when you rake your way out. It will leave it more playable for the next person.
Also on the subject of bunkers, check out in the picture below as you can see Tim is spraying something on the fescue eyebrows. This is our spring priming of the soil with wetting agents. We do this to all the fine turf areas of the course but we have never done it on bunkers since of course the bunkers are brand new. Wetting agents are really fancy compounds that once in the soil, they allow water to infiltrate "hard to wet" areas and even allow soil to hold water for extended periods. We use products like this on all of our fine turf areas to help manage moisture levels, but we are using high doses of a product that really holds water on our bunker eyebrows with the hope that we don't loose any fescue to drought stress this summer. I know summer is a few months off but getting this stuff in the soil early is the key to success. I just noticed that also in this picture you can see Richard in the background "watering in" the product on the other bunker, and check out the sand in foreground............it's just been smeared.
Since we moved 90% of the sod off of the practice hole fairway to build the new 9th tee, we thought we may as well use the last 10% of it for some other areas. The picture below is of 6 green surround where we installed our first "run off" area several years ago.
When we started adding these features to the course, we started small. Quickly we realized that the bigger the better on these areas so now we want to go back and increase the size of the ones we installed early on.
The picture below shows how this area on the back of 6 looks today now that the sod has "healed in a bit". Boo thinks it turned out great and so do I.
At the same time, some sodding is going on near the 5th green. Here we are just switching out some poa sod from the practice hole fairway since this area has now become fairway turf. The sod we are taking from here is pure ryegrass which looks very different from our poa fairways. None of this ryegrass sod is being wasted though as we are using it to sod some of the areas on the course that are roughs. The ryegrass is a suitable grass for roughs.
So here is where all this poa sod is coming from. Below you see the practice hole fairway which we seeded back in 2008 to pure ryegrass. Since then it has converted to a decent sward of poa and it definitely was the perfect source of good sod for the 9th tee project.
Thursday we sodded a good portion of this fairway in order to get it back into good playing condition right away. A full truck load is 13,000 square feet and in order to get the best price on the sod, we like to buy it in full truck loads since shipping is a good portion of the total cost. We were ready to go first thing Thursday morning but unfortunately the sod truck got held up at the scales in Cle Elum and we didn't actually get the product here until about 11:30. I assumed we would be staying late to get the stuff laid out but my staff really responded to the challenge and they laid all of it before quitting time at 2. Your golf course staff is SIMPLY AMAZING !!!.
Did I mention it was a record breaking 85 degrees that day?
Here's how it looked at day end. There is still some areas that need to be sodded but we will wait until we can again order a full truck load. We are close to finalizing the plan for the practice hole bunker renovation. When that project gets going we will have the opportunity to order some more sod and then finish grassing the fairway.
Lastly, you will notice a change in the sand and seed mixture on the golf course. In the past we have always used colonial bentgrass seed as that grass blends in well with our fine texture poa annua fairways. You can see in the picture below that the bentgrass seed is very tiny which is why you never really could see it in the sand mixture.
Now look below at a picture of the new mixture and you can clearly see seed.
The new seed is chewings fescue. Why the switch? Simple......I'm not very happy with divot recovery using the bentgrass so I needed to try something new. Fescue germinates quicker than bentgrass and is generally more adapted to our climate so it will hopefully persist in the divots. In fact, fescue is one of our native grasses and you can find it just about anywhere in our area. Click here for a more detailed look at our native fescue. Also, chewings fescue is fine textured like our poa so it should blend in well. In addition, unlike ryegrass or bentgrass, fescue is suitable as both rough and fairway so this means you can use the mixture anywhere on the golf course so have fun filling those divots and fill as many as you see.
First of all, if you haven't watched the video I made on bunkers, here it is. Watch it again and pay close attention to where I talk about bunker rake placement.
Now watch this video on bunker rake placement.
Two very different perspectives. Let me just say those guys are wrong. Bunker rakes should be left inside the bunkers so that the maintenance staff doesn't have to move them every time the grass needs to be cut. The exception is during tournament play. I understand the argument that rakes left outside the bunkers will result in fewer ruling violations but that's only because people haven't been taught that there is a better way to place them inside the bunker. Watch the second video again and take note of the rake that gets in the guys way. Somebody placed it up on a slope in such a manner that it was destined to cause a problem. That rake was likely put there because someone walked out of the bunker on that steep face because he, or she was too lazy to walk out the lower face like they should. This issue is about education and etiquette. People need to walk in and out of bunkers where the face is NOT steep whenever possible. People also need to be responsible and place rakes in such a manner that the next person wont run into an issue. That might mean you leave it in the bottom of the bunker where it's flat, but I imagine in most situations you can place it like I've instructed in my video. This is really the most reasonable thing to do. If you're at a course that asks for rakes to be placed outside the bunkers then by all means do that. If your playing here at Tacoma C&GC, please don't. Be a responsible golfer and place them in such a way as to not interfere with the person behind you. This usually happens naturally if you simply follow the rules of entering and exiting the bunkers.
I found this ball mark on the first green this morning. I was disappointed that a golfer would just leave their ball mark unrepaired, but we see it everyday, so I simply repaired it and you can't even tell it was ever there. The only thing more discouraging than an unrepaired ball mark is a ball mark repaired incorrectly. I say this because it's nearly impossible to fix a ball mark that has been repaired improperly. For example, in this picture below, someone attempted to repair a ball mark, but they lifted soil up into the center and now it will take weeks for grass to fill in. I could attempt to remove the soil and mend it properly, but it will never be as good a repair as if it would have been done properly the first time.
I can't stress this point enough, NEVER NEVER NEVER stick a tool into a putting green and push down on the tool's handle in such a way that soil comes to the surface like in this next picture.
Like with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way. Fixing a ball mark the right way is simple, but it's not so simple to show you how using pictures and text. That is why I made a short video for you to see just how easy it is. In fact, as you will see, it is so simple to fix a ball mark correctly that I was able to train my dog to do it. Click on the video below. To watch in full screen, click on the youtube button at the bottom of the video image.
The image above is horrific enough to give me sleepless nights. Someone was hitting range balls in this area who clearly has had no instruction in the proper way to practice on the range tee. Hitting on natural grass all year long is a luxury that our membership cherishes, but if everyone wasted grass like this person, they would loose that privilege. You can see that this person took a full divot with each shot. Also, this person spread out his or her shots over such a large area that there is no room for the next person to practice because now that person will have to stand in divots or move to a different hitting station.
Now in this picture above, you can see this person really knows how to practice. All of the divots are taken so that there is no wasted grass, and also now someone could easily walk up to this hitting station and find plenty of grass to use during their own practice session.
Personally, I think the best way to take divots is as shown above. There is no wasted grass between divots, and the narrow strips of grass between the rows of divots helps the grass fill in so recovery is faster. To learn how to do this, watch the video I made. Please click on the shortcut below and pay attention.
YOU MAY THINK THERE ISN’T ANY SEED IN THE SAND AND SEED MIXTURE PROVIDED HERE AT TACOMA C&GC.IN FACT THERE IS PLENTY.THE SEED IN THE MIXTURE IS THAT OF COLONIAL BENTGRASS. THE PICTURE BELOW SHOWS THAT THIS SEED IS VERY SMALL SO WHEN MIXED WITH SAND, YOU CAN HARDLY SEE THAT THERE'S ANY SEED THERE AT ALL. OF ALL THE GRASSES THAT WE CAN GET SEED FOR, COLONIAL BENTGRASS IS THE BEST MATCH TO OUR NATIVE, FINE TEXTURED POA ANNUA.FEEL FREE TO FILL DIVOTS WITH THIS MIXTURE ON ALL OUR FINE TURF AREAS (i.e. FAIRWAYS, TEES). IN THE ROUGHS IT IS BEST TO REPLACE YOUR DIVOTS SINCE COLONIAL BENTGRASS IS NOT A GOOD GRASS FOR ROUGHS. PEOPLE ASK ME ALL THE TIME IF THEY SHOULD FILL DIVOTS OR REPLACE THEM. IF A DIVOT IS PRETTY THICK AND CONSISTS OF SOIL AND ROOTS THEN I THINK REPLACING IT IS ALWAYS BEST. BUT REALLY I WOULD JUST LOVE EVERYONE TO DO AT LEAST ONE OR THE OTHER AS OPPOSED TO NOTHING AT ALL.
