Sure the winter was mild, but that might have actually hindered area golf courses.
It would have been better had it been worse.

Sounds a little off, right?

For area golf courses, though, a winter with eight feet of snow covering the fairways may actually have benefited efforts to open earlier. As it was, local courses received less than four feet of snow this winter, and much of that melted during two warm spells, leaving fairways and tee boxes bare in the dry, blustery days that followed.

“The thing with the snow is that it acts like insulation for the greens,” Springbrook owner Joe Golden said. “When it’s open and the frost goes four or five feet deep, then you are in trouble. This year we were O.K, but with the cool temperatures so far, we’ve been slow in coming out (of winter).”

And then there was last week’s brief return to wintry conditions, when Mother Nature dumped from a trace to four inches of slush and snow on Central Maine.

“That slowed us down, too,” Golden said. “It made everything so soggy again, and in some cases you can actually do more harm by going out there and working, so we’ve had to postpone things for a few days.”

By the end of the week, though, crews were out in force at the Leeds layout, making sure that its seven new tees and its rolling hills were ready for opening day. Still though, Springbrook, like most courses, has yet to pinpoint an exact opening day.

“We’ve opened as early as the first week of April,” Golden said. “Obviously not this year. We’re still trying to target the third week of April.”

The middle of the month seems to be the target for most courses, including Apple Valley in Lewiston, where new owner Gard Craw gambled and won with his strategy of plowing the greens in February.

“We plowed during that warm spell at the end of last month,” Craw said. “What we found then was no established mold on the greens, and no winter kill, and we got pretty lucky since then. Had it turned cold and windy again between then and now we would have been in trouble. The timing, though, was everything. Usually you want to keep the greens covered for about 60 days and then plow them to avoid winter kill and snow mold. We got none of that this year.”

The biggest problem Craw is battling now is something many drivers around the state continue to battle on their way to work – frost heaves.

“We got the first application of fungicide down before that quick storm last week, so that didn’t do much to us,” Craw said. “The weather from here on out will play a big part in how soon we open. We still can’t rule out April 15, but we’ll see.”

Fox Ridge in Auburn also weathered the winter well. According to course pro Bob Darling, there is less wear and tear than last season, despite the added exposure to the elements as the winter wore on.

“I think what helped us is that some of the covers we have for the greens, they were moved around to some of the more exposed spots,” Darling said. “Without the covers, who knows how much there would have been.”

Now that they are through the winter, several area courses are looking forward to renovation and expansion projects. Apple Valley, for instance, plans on adding nine holes to the Pinewoods Road layout over the next two years. At Prospect Hill, crews are breaking ground on a new irrigation system this week, and at Springbrook, new tee boxes on seven holes look to make the course more playable for the mid-level golfer.

“Like most places, I would imagine, we brought in our staff early,” Craw said. “All it is going to take is some favorable weather in the next week or so. When we get that break, we’ll be ready.”
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