One clear night that brings a crisp frost, one downpour that does anything more than leave a light smattering on the ground, and the temporary greens are back out.
This is a funny time of year. The sun can be warm but the turf can still be damp and the ball doesn’t run.
We all know the better weather is tantalisingly on the way, but that hail denting the side of our head tells us we’re not quite clear of winter’s grip just yet.
It hasn’t been the wettest for 40 years, as it was in 2023, or the near floods of 2024, but we’ve had snow and it has been cold.
Greenkeepers all over the UK have performed their usual miracles to keep courses playable at all but there is only so much you can do when the temperatures have turned.
It’s getting more amore difficult to produce the kind of surfaces we’d all like when the golf competition season gets under way. And it is getting under way very soon.
Some clubs kick it off in March. There will barely be a club in the land that doesn’t have something scheduled for the first weekend in April.
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Are we ready for it? Jim Croxton, chief executive of the British & International Golf Greenkeepers’ Association doesn’t think so.
“Quite foolishly we still seem obsessed with getting ready for a March opening day, or definitely by the first of April,” he told The Herald in Scotland.
“My personal view is that I don’t think the golf season really arrives until at least Easter and probably more into May.
“But unfortunately clubs are determined to have that first medal of the year on that first weekend of April, or whatever it may be, and very often the course is not quite ready because we have had a cold spring, and we may not have even finished some of the winter work because of all these other difficulties.”
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Why does the golf competition season have to begin in April?
So let me propose something. Why don’t we just stop playing competitions altogether in April? Why not move the season a few weeks to start at the beginning of May?
Your course manager would be happier. They’ve been under a lot of stress to try and hit what is a really tough deadline.
They will love that extra four and a bit weeks. It’s 30 more days where everything gets a little warmer and the days get longer. 30 days where aerated greens and surroundings knit into lovely smooth putting surfaces. 30 days where saturated ground can dry out before tournament shots are hit in anger.
I’ve travelled the country for a decade now talking to greenkeepers and committees and asking them about the scheduling of some of their big early season events.
Many have told me it’s probably too early for them to take place. Their course conditions, purely as a result of a winter that refuses to leave or an early spring that’s yet to truly fire, aren’t as they would want.
So the question is: if it’s so hard, why hold those important competitions so early? Tradition? Prestige? Why not just alter the calendar?
We don’t need to worry about losing time. These days, October is a virtual extension of summer but lots of clubs have already packed the golf competition tees away before the month has really begun.
If your club doesn’t do it already, why not utilise all of it in a glorious last tribute to the year? The conditions are still on our side – at least until the clocks go back.
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If we can’t, careful scheduling can still mean the only casualties will be the odd midweek medal and will anyone be so bereft about that?
Maybe I’m looking at things through my own experience, and through rose-tinted spectacles, but it feels to me like the best golf of the year is now happening later in the calendar.
Surely, it is common sense to take advantage of that.
Now have your say
What do you think? Is dealing with early season conditions just part of the test or would moving back the golf competition calendar a few weeks benefit everyone? Let me know with a comment on X.
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