Many of us, I am sure, do not fully appreciate all the components that come into play when it comes to opening a golf course early so I thought I would share this that was written by Slade King General Manager and Executive Professional at Glen Eagles Golf Course.
“To open the course or not is always a difficult decision every spring. This spring was an even greater challenge as the winter has been incredibly mild. There are many factors to consider, how the turf faired over the winter, how wet the course is, is the frost out of the ground enough, are the greens thawed by the sun in the mornings. We factor in all of these and then watch the forecast like a hawk. I personally have 5 different weather apps on my phone, and not surprisingly they are typically different. We look for trends and patterns and a major factor is the overnight temperatures. If you pull the tarps and things get to -10 or colder it makes for some tense times. Once everything aligns as they have this spring you have to ramp up the staff, start making calls and see who is available. We have only a few days to pull tarps, mat and roll the greens, take out garbage cans, benches, tees, flags etc. We also need to wash and gas a fleet of 80 carts, get the proshop put together and put a schedule together last minute with the handful of staff that can start this early. We then need to order pop, beer, food, fire up the pop machines, draft lines, ovens, coffee makers etc. All of this takes an intense amount of effort from our team in a handful of days:
Glen Eagles along with HeatherGlen, Blue Devil, Fox Hollow, Silver Wing, Boulder Creek, and many others have made the decision to open early. Believe it or not Fox Hollow had over 1000 rounds and were full on the first weekend as was Heatherglen, hard to believe!!!