rough & ready

ar-5™ is versatile, maneuverable and lightweight

Tacoma Country & Golf Club was built in 1894 and is the oldest country club west of the Mississippi River. The property features many large, massive trees, and strong winter storms wreak havoc on the course. The maintenance staff used to spend hundreds of man-hours blowing debris into piles and sweeping them up. That was until the Tacoma, Washington, club purchased two Jacobsen® AR-5™ fine-cut rotary mowers.

“I started shopping for rotaries when my gang mowers wore out,” superintendent Joel Kachmarek says. “I was tired of putting $3,000 into them every winter. I pulled them with tractors, and this wasn’t a lightweight combination. I demo’d everything, and the AR-5 fit our niche because it is smaller and lighter than the other manufacturers. There is a comparable piece of equipment from someone else, but it is underpowered.”

Kachmarek was reluctant to go to a smaller unit because of issues he’s experienced with clippings and clumping. He didn’t feel a unit this size was right for his course until the AR-5 arrived.

“The only mower that fit everything I wanted was the AR-5,” he says. “It’s productive. The engine is awesome — 60 hp and turbocharged — and it’s quiet. In my opinion, most rotaries on the market are either underpowered or too large and not maneuverable. The AR-5 is just the right size. One day we’ll cut fine turf around green surrounds, and the next day we’ll do really big areas. This mower is very versatile and maneuverable. They do everything we want when it comes to rough.”

"I can't begin to describe how much labor I save with these mowers." - Joel Kachmarek

Mowing around the many trees on the property with gang mowers pulled by a tractor, or even using large rough mowers proved challenging because of poor maneuverability. And there were issues with tire burnout. The AR-5’s smaller size and lighter weight allow operators to get between a lot of the trees that they previously couldn’t maneuver around. This minimizes the amount of work going back out to weed eat and fly-mow.

“I’ve cut this type of work in half because the AR-5 is so versatile,” Kachmarek says. “It gets the little stuff and big stuff better than any mower I’ve seen. It’s very exciting and has totally changed the way we manage the rough. When we got them, we used the discharge chute; but once we got a handle on the rough and knocked it down to the point where it became manageable, we closed the decks and started mulching and haven’t opened them since. We’ve been able to stay on top of the rough with the AR-5s.”

For all the advantages of the AR-5, labor savings is at the top of Kachmarek’s list. For example, last fall the staff didn’t pick up one pile of leaves until Thanksgiving. They just mowed with the AR-5s.

“I can’t begin to describe how much labor I save with these mowers,” he says. “Fall is a critical time because we’re trying to aerify all the surfaces before the winter rains fall. The last thing we need is to have to use the same pieces of equipment to blow leaves that we need for aerification. The AR-5s have freed us up for aerification because we don’t have to pile leaves. We blow leaves from the fairways into the rough and mow. The course looks spotless.”

The course is mowed wall to wall year-round. In winter the staff size drops from 23 to 19, and they are stretched thin.

“We don’t scale way back because we’re open all year and have about 30,000 rounds,” Kachmarek says. “When the leaves come down in fall, we’re as busy as in the middle of summer. We keep a lot of people until Christmas when we’re finished picking up leaves.”

The soil on the course is mostly gravel and there are few drainage lines. The golf course drains well, but during really wet periods using old, heavy gang mowers was difficult and hard on the golf course. Another AR-5 advantage is that it is 1,000 pounds lighter than the competition.

“Before we got the AR-5s,” Kachmarek says, “when we had a big windstorm in winter, we’d spend two weeks just cleaning up and doing very little other work. The ability of the AR-5 to mulch debris lets me direct my staff to other tasks. With the AR-5s we just go and the debris disappears; they just annihilate it.”

The superintendent says there really haven’t been any maintenance issues with the mowers.

“We’ve had a few minor problems,” he adds, “and the dealer has been right there to handle it. They even gave us a demo machine when one of the mowers had to be taken away.”

Encourage Poa annua
Unlike other courses, Tacoma Golf & Country Club encourages the growth of Poa annua. And why not? This area of the Pacific Northwest is a nearly perfect environment for this species of turfgrass. The temperature rarely gets over 90° F in summer or below freezing in winter.

“We just try to keep our Poa annua happy,” Kachmarek says. “We can’t do anything except love it. Poa likes phosphorus more than other turfgrasses. We watch pH levels a little more than courses with bentgrass. Poa struggles with disease under low pH. Our grass is 80 years old and is mature and grows very tight. It’s constantly adapting to the environment. We have areas with such shade that we couldn’t grow any other type of grass. Each strain of Poa we have on this course has adapted to its particular environment. That is the wonderful thing about Poa.”

When growth regulators were introduced, Poa became as good as any other surface. There was one major drawback. When seed heads come up the greens turn bumpy.

“Now that we have tools to keep seed heads from growing, we can shut down the growth during those periods,” Kachmarek says. “There may be 1,000 different genotypes on each green with each growing at a different rate. Growth regulators level the playing field so we can have smoother surfaces, especially in the afternoons.”

Personal connection
Kachmarek was named assistant at Tacoma when he graduated from Oregon State University in 1992. He left four years later to become a head superintendent, and returned when the club called him in 1999.

“This property is dear to my heart,” he says. “My wife and I were married on the clubhouse lawn. The superintendent who was here before me — my mentor — made some dramatic changes and gave this club the reputation of being one of the finest conditioned courses around. Right now I’m just trying to maintain that momentum, although my expectations are probably much higher than the members. I don’t get many complaints, and I guess that’s good.”