Frozen Soil = Firm Playing Conditions!

Last week, I received many compliments on the golf course conditions. Some of the words used to describe the course included unusual words for this time of the year in the Seattle area: dry and firm. I kind have have to agree. This time of the year can give us some unpredictable weather conditions that have a major impact on the golf course and it was nice to hear the aforementioned terminology every time I went into the clubhouse.

This picture shows why we have frost delays.  Not good!

This of weather stretch included clear skies which means little if any precipitation and unusal amounts of sunshine. As many Seattleites know, clear skies during January usually equate to COLD temperatures as there is no cloud cover to serve as any sort of insulation. We had nighttime temperatures dip into the low 20's which forced a string of frost delays until the noonish hour.

As anybody knows, it is no fun waiting out a frost delay, the uptick is that the consistent low temperatures froze the soil profile which produces, you guessed it- FIRM playing surfaces.

Green #7 with the frozen pin location.

However, one not so great benefit was that our greens were frozen so thoroughly that it was impossible to rotate the pin location and left our golfers playing the same pin for a week straight.  Every attempt that we made to cut a fresh cup either bent the edges of the shell of the cup cutter and left our course set up guy feeling sheepishly defeated. 

That just goes to prove that while we eliminated the "problem" rainfall, we really just traded one problem for another.  I watched some golfers attempt to insert a wooden tee into some of our tee boxes and let me tell you, they could have used a 10 pound hammer to drive it into the ground!

My point is, while I would love to take all of the credit for the awesome playing conditions, I will admit that the weather produced conditions that were the agronomy staff's biggest ally. We were able to get the golf course all mowed up without making a single rut.

Looking down Hole #1 with freshly mowed tee decks & fairway.

Either way you look at it, we can all agree on one thing regarding that stretch of weather: a good change of pace!