Blame the Tree

 An August wind storm hit us on Saturday.

 Surprisingly no trees were blown over as one gust was recorded at 49 mph

 As you can see there is a tremendous amount of debris on the golf course.

 The difference between this storm and a winter storm is the grass is actively growing.  The playing field received over 1.5" of much needed rain during this storm so to be more acurate, the grass is VERY actively growing.

 The excessive amount of debris makes it impossible to stay on our standardized mowing schedule so the rough will be very long in places.

 In addition, it will require so much labor to clean this up that we will not be able to provide tournament conditions that you would normally enjoy this time of year.  We will not be mowing anything at standardized frequency.   The greens will be slower. The short grass will be shaggy.

It took half the staff all day on Monday to simply clean and rake the bunkers.  Do not expect regular bunker raking for the next couple of weeks as debris removal is now the priority.

 Given the circumstances, "winter rules" are in effect until further notice.

 There is too much large debris to mulch it with the rotary mowers.  All of it will need to be picked up.

 Tacoma is maintained virtually wall to wall.  There are no areas where we can just blow the debris and let it be.  All of it will need to be picked up and hauled away.

 This clean up will take time and a lot of labor.  This blog post is not to provide an exuse for the unseasonable golf conditions........This blog post is to provide a reason for them.  Please don't blame the Green Department for unsatisfactory golf conditions this week.  The blame should be placed on the tree.

Make note of the debris on #12 where there are virtually no Douglas fir trees.  This debris can simply be mulched by the rotary mowers in a few minutes.  All trees are expensive to maintain but very few are as expensive as Douglas fir.  We spend countless hours picking up after them, not to mention they shade your turf and they are choking out many of the endangered oak trees.  I'm sure everyone will clearly see the cost of trees this week although the real cost of trees is not always this visible.  If you want to know the hidden cost of trees, click HERE to read a very well written article from the USGA Green Section.