By Steve Derderian
sderderian@massgolf.org
A roadside marquee at Strawberry Valley Golf Course in Abington has offered a simple message to passing drivers this week: “Looking forward to melting.”
Across Massachusetts, that sentiment is being shared by golfers and club staff alike. After a winter that buried courses under upwards of three feet of snow — and in some cases battered them with 70-plus-mph winds — the season’s long-awaited thaw has finally begun.
A stretch of warmer days has helped ramp up excitement across the golf community, as online forums and pro shop phones have been buzzing about potential openings all week. But while melting snow has sped things along, it’s only one step in the long process of preparing a course for play.
And what’s emerging isn’t always pretty.
Cape Cod and up through the South Shore are usually among the first areas to open up for the season in the Northeast, but fallen trees, scattered limbs and soggy fairways are the first obstacles standing between winter and opening day. The staff at Captains Golf Course in Brewster says the latest storm alone left multiple trees down across the property.
“Turns out 70 mph winds and two feet of February snow aren’t great for golf courses,” the course posted in a social media update.
The story is similar down the road in Yarmouth, where Bayberry Hills and Bass River golf courses are digging out from their snowiest winter in more than a decade. Director of golf operations Scott Gilmore said crews counted more than 50 trees down after the most recent storm, damage they couldn’t even begin addressing while the courses were still buried.
With temperatures now climbing into the 50s and 60s, the itch to get out to play is elevated, but it is often met with tempered expectations.
“The Yarmouth Golf team is ready to begin the clean-up, and we should be able to begin late next week,” Gilmore said in a recent course update, adding that Bass River will be the first priority as an all-hands-on-deck effort gets underway.
“We still have 75% of our greens covered in snow,” reported Amanda Fontaine, superintendent of Ledges Golf Club out west in South Hadley. “The main difference so far is having to plow cart paths to get to places out there and we still can’t access some of the holes.”
At Braintree Municipal Golf Course, Director of Golf Daryn Brown says the bigger challenge is often what golfers can’t see beneath their feet.
Heavy snow accumulation and ongoing snowmelt have left the turf extremely soft and saturated,” Brown said. “While a lot of turf is now visible, there is still a significant amount of snowmelt working its way through the ground.” He added that maintenance vehicles can’t reach large portions of the course yet without risking turf damage, and early April currently stands as a potential opening window.
Stephen Tibbels, the longtime superintendent at Acushnet River Valley Golf Course, has known for a while that spring usually doesn’t arrive all at once. First the snow begins to dissipate and pull away from the grass, and then water needs to drain. And then there’s some non-golf signs the course is ready like bluebirds returning and deer moving deeper into the woods to have their fawns.
Tibbels, who has spent the past 26 years at Acushnet, says the danger of opening too early is something golfers rarely see firsthand. Saturated soil combined with lingering frost can weaken root systems, setting the stage for turf to struggle once the summer heat arrives.
“You can put the course behind the eight ball pretty quickly,” he said. “If it’s too wet and you push it, the greens can look like the surface of the moon the next day.”
In the meantime, the work is largely manual. Crews walk the courses picking up everything from large branches destined for the chipper to tiny twigs that blowers miss. Cart paths blocked by fallen trees are cleared one section at a time, and in many places, the crews doing that work are stretched thin. Early spring staffing remains thin at many public facilities, with seasonal employees often not arriving until late May. Until then, it’s a mix of year-round staff and some temporary workers to clean up the mess that Mother Nature left behind.
The good news is there already a few early signs of the season stirring. Driving ranges are beginning to reopen across the state. Stow Acres has continued operating its covered range throughout the winter, while Holly Ridge Golf Club, the popular par-3 course in Sandwich, is among a few places to open the range. Falmouth Country Club plans to open its range for this weekend.
Earlier this week a small group was even spotted teeing it up at Edgartown Golf Club on Martha’s Vineyard, and some took advantage of open tee times at Allendale Country Club in Dartmouth, while some local courses such as Sandwich Hallows, Unicorn Golf Course in Stoneham, and Heritage Country Club in Charlton have announced it will have tee times and carts this weekend.
But for most it’s still an ongoing effort to dry out the fairways and greens, clean the debris and conduct their final assessments before giving green light. Rest assured though, golf season in Massachusetts is not far away.
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