Remember Collars?

This picture of #11 green was taken a couple years ago and I've always loved it because the lighting was just right and so the turf looks amazing.  This picture was taken the same time of year as right now and I know that because with this picture, I was showing how great things looked while under the influence of the plant growth regulator called Embark.  Well anyway, again we are very much on Embark, but a lot has changed in this area since this picture was taken.  The bunkers have been renovated, one of the bunkers and several trees have been removed, and many trees were lost in last years ice storm.  Below is how it looks today.

Now of course the lighting is different but what really should stand out is that now, today you see the fairway has continued up around to the side, and behind the green.  The result is of course a "run off" type area but with that......means you really no longer have a defined collar around the green.  This has really made the golf course more fun to play and also more fun to maintain.  I remember spending countless hours painting dots on the green so that the operators could see where to perform their clean up pass, resulting in a perfectly uniform collar.  Yes it looked great, but always in the back of my mind, I felt that this type of control was a little over the top and maybe we shouldn't be spending so much time on things that really aren't totally necessary.  Now we have these fairway extensions around every green except on holes 3 and 13.  On those two holes, we plan to install fairway extensions  but later on this year when we have more time.  Now that collars have been eliminated almost all together, so has the need to use walk mowers.  Soon you will see a new machine on the property that is perfect for mowing these fairway extensions, and it is not a walk mower.  It is a mid sized fairway mower.  You can expect a blog devoted to this machine and how it will make us so much more efficient with our mowing.  For now let me just say that I love these new tightly mowed areas around the greens, and  this week we sanded all of them which will further aid their development into smooth, firm swards that look and play like they've been here forever.

Above you can see us sanding this area on 11 green.

Now here you can see the new fairway extension on #1.  It's really hard to tell this area was sodded a few months ago. Even more amazing, the sod we used was that stuff we pulled off the middle of our driving range.  Poa annua is just amazing stuff.  It adapts to any mowing height and does so very quickly this time of year.

You've seen this area several times throughout the renovation, but now you can see that all the sod is starting to look the same and almost like the original fairway turf in front of the 8th green.  This area where green 5 and 8 conjoin is also done with a lot of driving range sod, but since this area is so large, we ended up using sod from several areas and today you can't really tell we did that.

Here is the back of #7 green and you can see this fairway extension connects to the tee surface on #8.  This is really neat stuff and again, we have eliminated most of the green's collar.

This picture shows how the new fairway extension around 12 green connects to the new tee on 16.  The picture really doesn't do it justice.  The contours here are very extreme and it looks really, really cool.

 I wasn't sure this area on 15 green and 13 tee would turn out this good, but it looks great.  The new black tee adds 20 yards to #13 and again, the collar around #15 is gone and it's all just one tightly mowed area.

Here it is again from another angle. 

This is looking down 18 from the back of the green and you guessed it, no more uniform collar.  Why does this look so good to me?  Why did I spend so much time all those years worrying about the perfectly uniform collar?  I'm not sure I have the answer to that question but I guess this just looks natural to me.  I guess it looks natural because there is a lack of uniformity.  It's this idea that golf should be played the way it was meant to be.  Yes, I'm stealing this idea from the Bandon Dunes motto, but really this is not a new idea.  It's a very old idea.  The best golf courses are those where very little earth was moved and thus they blend into the natural landscape, because they are the natural landscape.  The golf course at Tacoma Country and Golf Club is one of the oldest in the country and it's clear that very little earth has been moved on this parcel of land. Moving large quantities of earth to build a golf course is rarely necessary, but all too often done because it is easy with today's machinery.  At the end of the day, I think most people are attracted to natural looking landscapes as opposed to those that look "man made".  Okay, I might be wrong, I can't speak for everyone else so I'll just say that I personally feel this way.  You can tell I'm a big fan of the rebirth of minimalistic architecture.  Well I'm also a big fan of minimalistic maintenance.  In the last couple of years, we have eliminated stripes, straight mowing lines, and all the different mowing heights.  Our objective is to be who we are and that is one of the oldest golf courses you'll find anywhere.  There is no need for the modern look here.  Tacoma is a classic and we just want to focus on good playing surfaces.

Okay I need to stop rambling.  Above is a picture showing our dedication to playing surfaces.  Not only are we sanding around greens this week, we are sanding everything that was sodded during the renovation, including repairs made around fairway bunkers.  Soon it will all be smooth and firm again.

Seedlings, Seedlings Everywhere

Above you see #4 two months ago.

Here it is today.  Finally finished and now just growing in and maturing.  Right now there are seedlings everywhere like you see here where we restored a very large area that once was fairway and now will be rough.  There is a lot of areas like this where we have young seedlings growing and the place is starting to look like a golf course that is NOT under construction.

This is that area between 5 and 8 where almost every yard of soil passed through during the renovation.  Today it is finally seeded and on its way to looking like nothing ever happened.

Right now the seedlings on the tee surfaces are coming in nicely also.  This is the 11th tee and it is looking awesome.  

Here is a close up of the tee surface.  If you check out the last blog you will see that there is three grass types here.  Right now you can see all three types have emerged and are looking great.

Check out the half acre teeing ground for 6 and 18.  It's starting to look like something now.

Here's the new tee on 8.  Also looking real good.  Honestly everything is coming along great and we still plan on playing the new black tees on June 15th for the US OPEN field day even though I'm sure they will be a little thin.  One thing that is helping is the record breaking weather we've been having.  It hasn't rained for the last 12 days (which is amazing in May) and the temperatures have been 15 to 20 degrees above average.  Because of that, we have had very quick germination of all the seedlings, and the golf course is really very firm.  I know most of you have been enjoying the firm and fast conditions.  Funny, last year we had the driest summer ever recorded and I wasn't able to get the fescue to brown out.  Today, almost every fescue bunker eyebrow is browned out.  I just love this look.

Well it's back to green because today the rain has returned.

Talking about "Practice"

In the image above, you're looking at the renovation proposal for the practice hole.  Our architect Nick Schaan from DMK has come up with this concept and I think it's brilliant, but of course what else would you expect from Nick.  We tasked Mr. Schaan with devising a plan that would give us a practice area which can be utilized by more than one person at a time, and obviously an area that represents what you might find out on the links at Tacoma.  So this is the plan that the Committee supports and we will be looking to get it approved by the Board so that we may begin construction this fall.  If your interested, continue reading as I break down the details of the plan.

First, look closely at the green itself and you'll see that it is 3 times larger than the current one.  Also, it's plain to see that there are three bunkers instead of just the one.  You should also notice that there is a new fairway area south of the tennis courts (area B).  From here you can practice shots up to 130 yards where as now from area A the maximum is about 120 yards.  Area C, north of the green, is the perfect place to practice that long bump and run shot since you wouldn't have to carry a bunker.  If you've been on the course lately, you can see that the long bump and run is a shot you must have in the bag if you hope to score well.  With the new fairway areas, expanded green, and bunkers, it wouldn't be a problem for two or three people to use the facility simultaneously.  This is something that really isn't practical with the current practice area.

In the southwest corner, you can see that there is a new putting surface.  The idea here is make this surface dead flat.  Of course you can practice putting, but the idea here is to provide a surface with multiple uses.  Our thought is you might take up a game of Bocce ball or croquet.  Or maybe you just throw down a blanket and have a picnic, or whatever one does when they're bored of playing tennis and hitting wedges.

Now this image shows where trees would be removed in order to make the plan work.  Currently there is 9 trees that we have identified that should be removed.  Some removals are to accommodate golf and some are to allow sunlight penetration.  Either way, this is a heavily wooded site and it is unlikely that you would notice any of these trees missing.

 In addition, the Committee is recommending that we install some lights on the new practice hole.  The diagram above shows four locations of light fixtures.  There is several needs being met here.  One is that this northwest corner of the property currently has no power or lighting.  This makes it very vulnerable to mischievousness activity.  Also, since the restroom has no power, it has no lights and heat which means it has to be closed down during cold stretches to prevent the pipes from bursting, not to mention the seat of throne gets ice cold and none of us like that.  The current tennis facility has no lighting so this part of the project would give us an opportunity to provide that, making it possible for folks to play tennis after sunset.  And of course the idea is that we would also have lighting for the practice hole itself.  Now these lights, and the tennis court lights would be "on demand" meaning they would be only on when you are using those facilities.  The lights at the restroom would be on at all times for security and one light would be on at the green at all times simply because it would look really neat when you drive in and out of the Club.

So yes, we're talking about quite a bit more than just renovating a bunker, we're talking about finishing what we started on the golf course.  We just finished updating much of the course, and making it first class.  The practice hole is just an abandoned par 3 from the original layout, and nothing has been done to it for several decades.  It's in desperate need of some updating, and if it is to be part of Tacoma's practice area, it needs this project in order to be worthy of being in the same class as the rest of the Club.  After all, the practice hole is the first thing you see when you arrive and the last thing you see when you leave, it should be "first class".