By Kalle Oakes,Staff Writer

These days, it’s drearily appropriate that Springbrook Golf Club has two entities of water in its name.

When he surveys the property his family has owned for 21 seasons, Joe Golden spends more time measuring rainfall than gauging the hardness of the greens.

Prospective golfers driving by the ninth hole that runs parallel to Route 202 see the puddle of standing water in front of the green and the network of tributaries flooding the fairway and start making plans to catch the latest “Star Wars” flick on Memorial Day weekend.

Scary stuff, when golf is your livelihood. That mass of green on the radar screen eliminates the crowd that would otherwise enjoy your green real estate. And that means there’s little green exchanged at the pro shop.

“It’s one step forward, three steps back,” said Golden.

He’s not alone. Officials at Fox Ridge Golf Club in Auburn and Apple Valley Golf Course in Lewiston didn’t need to hold the palms of their hands out the window long to forecast Monday’s foot traffic.

You’ll have to excuse them if they tighten those palms into fists and shake them heavenward for a second or two.

How ’bout them Apples?

Gard Craw purchased the nine-hole Apple Valley layout on Pinewoods Road from Bill Gilroy prior to the 2004 season.

Some of his recent rainy-day reading included Gilroy’s statistics of April rounds played at Apple Valley during his tenure.

“We were off 81 percent, and with (Monday) being the 23rd of the month, May isn’t shaping up to be much better,” said Craw.

Maine courses typically see their backbone membership lacing up golf shoes in the parking lot as soon as the gates open in mid-April or early May. Recreational players who don’t want to get wet feet or chilled hands keep their clubs in cold storage until blue skies and 70-degree days prevail.

Based on the current extended forecast, work-skippers and weekend warriors might not grip-and-rip until June.

Puddles and quagmires aren’t as troublesome at Fox Ridge, which is blessed with a state-of-the-art drainage system and cart path access to every hole. But it’s facing the same low participation and player morale that has besieged everyone else.

“People are getting itchy. They want to play,” said Fox Ridge general manager Ed Balboni. “We got teased a little bit with that week of nice weather in April. We were open and we were busy. The new golfer, they’re waiting for the weather stations to stop talking about wind chill.”

Timing was everything

Springbrook missed Mother Nature’s brief, warm embrace. It opened Thursday, April 21, the day the thermometer dipped from the 70s to the 50s.

Golden has watched it rain one or both days of every weekend since. As of noon Monday, he’d measured more than 14 inches of precipitation at the club since April 1.

“We usually average 3 1/2 inches in April, if that tells you something,” Golden said. “This year’s weather put us two to three weeks behind schedule right from the beginning. It’s not only the rain but the low temperatures that create a problem. And on April 1, we still had a foot of snow on top of our course.”

Once the rain subsides, the ponds on No. 9 should dissipate. Golden said clay soil will aid the drying process.

Even if that mysterious, yellow-orange orb reappears in the sky this morning, though, Springbrook and Apple Valley will lose thousands more dollars in cart rental revenue. The machines won’t be welcome until the ground is hard enough to prevent the tires from leaving six-inch-deep ruts in the rough.

And Craw cautioned that players at his course might want to replenish their equipment bag with a handful of x-out balls.

“A big problem for us is the maintenance work that gets put off. The grass doesn’t care if it’s raining every day,” he said. “It just keeps growing.”

So does the roster of high-handicappers going stir-crazy.

“I know so many people,” said Craw, “who haven’t even played their first round yet.”