Colorado golf courses got no rest this winter

 Warm weather brought near-constant play as spring arrives

By Jim Bebbington

Now that its nearly spring, Colorado golf courses and the people who run them are heading into their busiest season a little worn out.

Here’s the deal: people in golf work a ton of hours during the spring, summer and fall. When you’re out there hitting on the range late, there is someone waiting for you to finish so they can clean up and go home.  The assistant pros who staff your favorite pro shop more than likely put in way more than 40 hours a week during golf season.

The entire golf industry is geared for that. But it comes with the expectation that during the winter they will probably have some very quiet days behind the pro shop desk and many days in which courses are closed because of snow.

Not this year.

The Colorado golf industry is heading into the busiest time of the year already a little tired.

This winter the front range courses saw warm temperatures and swarms of players, nearly every day. Many courses had to institute bans on golf carts, limited hours, or shut-down altogether to keep the grass from suffering damage.

During one golf round this February a cart-waitress told me that she had never before had to schedule time off during the winter. This year she was working nearly every day.

Not only was it warm enough to play nearly every single day during February, but there was nearly zero rain. Course operators had to turn their watering systems back on.

For example, at Ballyneal Golf Club, one of Colorado’s premier courses, they have a winter watering system in place. It was so warm for so long that wasn’t sufficient, and they had to switch back to the summer system in early March.

Valley Country Club was so busy that they finally closed the course altogether March 1 for several weeks to give the ground time to heal.

Several courses instituted winter-long prohibitions on teeing off from par 3 tee boxes. The divots that were created in December are still there in April. Riverdale Dunes has an installed mat system ready to go; other courses just threw carpet down next to tee boxes and asked players to hit from there.

We couldn’t find any courses locally that have gone as far as courses in the UK do. There, where year-round golf is also not unheard of, most courses give players a little patch of plastic grass to carry with them. Players are supposed to pick up their ball, put the mat down, and place their ball on the mat and hit from there.

The new Bella Ridge Golf Course near Johnstown was proving so popular right out of the gate that they had to cap the number of players each day at about 100; tee times there were available only through about 11 a.m. each morning.

Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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