Golfer responsibility checklist

What looks out of place in this photo? If you look closely, you can see that there are 32 broken tees laying on the turf on and around the tee markers. There is a box conveniently located on all of the par 3's to place broken tees, but they are not used much. The maintenance staff here at Glendale spends a lot of time picking up broken tees around the teeing area every day. This should be the golfer's responsibility, just like replacing divots and repairing ball marks. Also shown in the photo are divots taken but not filled. There is a bucket of divot mix on all of the par 3 tees. Our staff also fills many divots on teeing areas everyday which can also be done by the golfer. These house keeping items are done by our staff, but should be done by the golfer. This leads me to think of the other things a golfer should be doing each time they play a round, whether here or any other golf course. We as golfers need to respect the other players on the course, the course itself, and the game of golf too. Listed below is my golfers responsibility checklist. Look it over, and see how many things you are doing each round to help keep Glendale in nice condition.
1. Replace every divot you take. If you can't replace it, fill it in with sand/seed mix.
2. Repair every ball mark you make on a green.
3. Rake your footprints in bunkers, and place the rake along the backside of the bunker.
4. Please don't litter. Place all trash in appropriate containers, and pick up your broken tees.
5. Please keep power carts on the path around tees and greens.
6. Our fairways are much firmer and drier than than the rough areas, so please keep power carts on fairways in wet weather.

By following these six rules, you will help keep our course in good condition, cut down on maintenance by our staff, and make each round of golf more enjoyable for every player at Glendale CC.
Thanks for your help!

Tree or bunker in wrong place?

Trees and bunkers don't get along very well together. Bunkers are hazards on a golf course to penalize a bad shot. A successful shot hit from a bunker is hard enough just hitting off a good lie. Could you hit that same shot from a lie on the sand sitting on top of a one inch wide tree root? I would call that situation double trouble. Chances are that if you hit a drive into one of our fairway bunkers at Glendale, your ball will be resting on top of a tree root just under the surface of the sand. We have six fairway bunkers at Glendale, located on holes 4, 5, and 8. Each one of these bunkers is full of roots just below the surface of the sand, coming from an adjacent tree. These trees are too close to the bunkers. Keeping tree roots out of the bunkers is impossible to maintain. We can pull them out, but we'll miss some and more will be back soon. The real problem is golfer safety. Someone could easily get hurt if their club catches a root while hitting a shot. Check out the photo below of the root in the fairway bunker on the 5th hole. This is typical of the roots found in our bunkers.

The next photo below shows the roots we removed from a small area in the left corner of the left side fairway bunker, on the 4th hole.

A weed is defined as a plant out of place. A tomato plant in a corn field is a weed, and so is a tree in a bunker. In this case the trees are out of place, and in my opinion, the only long term solution is to remove the trees due to the safety issues they create. This issue will be brought up and discussed at the next Green Committee meeting, on July 18, 2012.