If you’re a hard-core golf enthusiast, you’re probably well aware that Beaver Meadow Golf Course installed two high-tech golf simulators inside the clubhouse in January. Those simulators allowed for golf to be played at the course all year, not just when the weather cooperated.
That’s all fine and good – and we had a blast trying them out – but it’s never quite the same experience as playing outside on a real course. Missing are intangibles such as chirping birds, glare from the sun, the occasional rain drop or two, puddles, mud, ball-washing stations, golf cart burnouts, raking the bunkers, hunting through the woods for a ball.
Well don’t worry, because Beaver Meadow’s full outdoor course is now open for the season.
The course teed off for the first time this season on St. Patrick’s Day, which resident golf pro Phil Davis said was the earliest opening date in Beaver Meadow’s history. And that’s saying something – the course dates back to 1897.
Generally, Davis said, golf courses in the Northeast can count on opening by the second week of April. By then, everything should have had plenty of time to melt and thaw. But that’s just the latest week a course can expect to open. Early openings can vary widely, and it all depends – of course – on the weather.
This year, since we really didn’t have much of a winter in the way Granite Staters would think of it, the course was ready well ahead of schedule.
But we were wondering: What goes into getting a golf course ready to open to the public? We’ve never worked at a golf course before – unless you count our dominance of the simulator course as work – so we decided to head over there last week and see what was going on.
It was a picture-perfect day to be working on a golf course last Wednesday, and the Beaver Meadow staff who were on cleanup duty were in high spirits. It’s tough to be in a bad mood when you’re on a picturesque golf course on a beautiful, sunny morning.
Corey Luckern spent the first part of his morning going through a supply shed, pulling items out that had been stored away for the winter. At the beginning of each season, Davis will look at the inventory for the pro shop and determine which display pieces will stay and which will be retired.
Once that task was taken care of, it was on to a different shed. In this shed, Luckern rummaged through some tools until he settled on a rake and shovel he liked. Tools in hand, he made his way to the driving range, where it was a light cleanup task.
The pads where you tee off from were in pretty good shape, so there wasn’t much they needed. The job was mostly picking up loose debris scattered around the general area – golf tees, scraps of paper, a random button-up shirt (who went home shirtless and didn’t realize it?).
On another side of the course, Terry Anderson and Alex Bashios were lugging around leaf-blowers, clearing off greens. The course already looked pretty neat and clean, but these guys were out there to make absolutely sure that every green was in tip-top shape for the golfers who would soon be putting away.
In all, there wasn’t a whole lot of heavy lifting going on. No tearing up spots of grass and replacing it. No reconfiguring sprinkler systems. No digging out new bunkers. Nope, the course was in pretty good shape as it was, and only little things needed to be done.
“Really it’s about debris removal at this time,” Davis said the day before opening. “The grass is still a little dormant, so they won’t be cutting. . . . Right now, it’s just kind of making it presentable to the golfers that are going to be coming tomorrow.”
And the crew did a great job of removing debris – the course really did look spotless, and that was before most of the cleaning took place.
Now with the changing of the seasons come some changes to the hours at Beaver Meadow, particularly as it relates to the simulator inside. That’s right, simulator, as in singular.
The course has two indoor golf simulators that are both set up and available all winter. But when spring comes around and the outdoor course opens, the smaller simulator (the one in the pro shop) shuts down to make way for golf clubs, balls, tees, gloves and other golf paraphernalia. The remaining simulator will remain open throughout the warm months, but it will close at 8 p.m. instead of 10. Bummer for all you late-night indoor golfers.
For the first few weeks, the earliest tee times will be 9 a.m. Another important note is that the course will be walking only for the time being – carts are too heavy to drive along the damp grass right now.
“Probably next week some time we’ll open up to carts,” Davis said last week. “We’ll direct traffic around all the wet spots.”
In the meantime, you’ll have to make do the old-fashioned way.
“There’s very little damage that can happen when you have just walkers out there,” Davis said.
“We’re not fully cart-pathed, so, if we had cart paths around the entirety of the golf course we’d probably allow it.”
But a little walking never hurt anyone, right? Plus, golf isn’t usually a sport where you really work up a sweat and exert yourself to the max, so adding some exercise walking to go with your golf should be just fine.
To book your own tee time, go to beavermeadowgolfcourse.com or call 228-8954.
