NS golf courses delayed weeks from opening

HALIFAX – The heavy snowfall and cold temperatures is keeping golfers indoors.

While courses in our region often gear up for April openings, many have been forced to push the start of the golf season back several weeks. Some courses are trying to speed things up by clearing snow, while others are just waiting for Mother Nature to do her job.

A woman wearing snow shoes walks her dog at the Old Ashburn Golf Course in Halifax. The footwear is fitting, rather than golf shoes. But golfers are getting anxious for the weather to warm up. In the meantime, they’re practicing inside the Ashburn clubhouse, to prepare for the season.

The sound of a tractor plowing snow can be heard at the Brightwood Golf and Country Club in Dartmouth, where some of the greens are being cleared of snow to prevent turf loss.

“Basically we’re just trying to help the melting process more than anything,” says Blair MacKinley, the head golf professional at Brightwood.

“We’re just trying to get a layer of snow off so that we can get down to the ice to get the sun on it.”

Four greens have been cleared of snow at Brightwood where they’ve found 4 to 8 inches of ice below.

At Old Ashburn Course in Halifax, they’ve decided not to remove any snow, mainly because it’s hard to get to all the greens.

“The other challenge is, if you don’t move the snow far enough from the green, then you build up big banks around the green and that ice pack would stay even longer and it could kill the fringes,” says Gordie Smith, the General Manager at Ashburn.

At both Brightwood and Ashburn, all 18 holes are covered with tarps, providing some protection. Snow cover is generally good for a golf course, but a thick ice pack, is not.

“There’s no oxygen down underneath that ice,” says Smith.,”The ice that forms on the plant, after 80 or 90 days, will start killing the plant and we could see some turf loss after that, so we’re kind of on that cusp.”

Smith notes the first real Winter storm was on January 24th.

Golfers at Ashburn are going to have to continue practicing inside a little longer than they anticipated.

“It’s going to be a wet opening,” says MacKinley, “and with the amount of snow that everybody’s got, it’s definitely pushing some courses two/three weeks behind schedule.”

“Normally at the old course we’re open around the third week of April and the new course toward the end of the month and now we’re looking at the first week or two of May,” said Smith.

“It will affect the whole industry in the area.”