Course Opening and Current Conditions

As I expected, the unusually warm winter has brought many questions about the opening date for the golf course.  Historically, the average opening date is around April 1st.  In year's past, I have been able to open as early as March 22nd and have waited as late as April 5th due to rain.  This is what I consider our "normal" window.  While I believe that we will open on the early end of that "normal" window, I fear it might not be as early as some members would anticipate given the forecasted conditions next week.  I have had members suggest we open as early as this coming Tuesday. Given this understandable confusion, I thought I would elaborate on the two major criteria I consider before opening to full member play and update where the course is today.

1.  Firmness - The course must be able to sustain foot and cart traffic without ruts and prints that could take weeks to smooth out as well as permanently compact the soil. 

Currently -  the last snow melt was off Monday and the greens are quite spongy and soft.  We are not quite ready to put a mower or worse yet a foot on them.

2.  Growth - We need growth to recover from traffic and mowing as well as firm up the soil.  Normally, I like to have the grass mowed once or twice before we put golf on it.  Cool-season grasses grow with air temperatures of 60+ and soil temperatures of 50+.  While the winter was 'above average' in the 30's and low 40's, it still doesn't necessarily get the grass growing when we need temperatures in the 50's and 60's. 

Currently - Today was our first sustained day of air temperatures in that range and the soil is still in the low-to-mid 40's.  As you can see in the photos below, the fairway, green and rough are still dormant, brown and not really growing yet, and the soil temperature reading I took today in the top 2 inches is still in the low 40's.

All that being said, I think a realistic timeline for opening will be sometime the week of March 19th if the weather holds.  There is much yet to do before we are ready, but we all look forward to seeing golf again as soon as possible.  I hope to see you all very soon!

COURSE CONDITIONS

As I said above, we are still quite soft and wet in areas.  Overall, I have yet to see any major damage other than the bunker on 11 and some other flood debris and silt deposits.  The Poa annua in the greens is showing signs of waking up, but bentgrass in the greens, fairways, and tees is still wanting it to warm up a little more.  In the picture below, you can see the light green Poa versus the still brown-reddish brown bent that is just starting to wake up.  Not really anything to mow just yet.

From #9 green today.

Given the poa is starting, we will likely be mowing in the next 5-7 days to start cleaning up the winter fuzz.

Winter Mess and Snow Mold

One of the great upsides to the warm winter was the lack of snow mold disease pressure.  Even the rough, which we do not spray, is relatively free of disease.  I have not seen the course this clean to start the year in 7 seasons.

Even the winter mess is not too bad.  Coming off winters with ice storms and repeated flooding, there is only some debris left from our late winter flood and cleanup on 11 bunker.  A tree came down across # 4 tee with the last windstorm, but we will have to wait until things get drier to clean it up without making a mess of the tee.

Fortunately for us, it fell almost exactly between the women's and men's tee.  We couldn't have felled it that accurately!