What time of year or Holiday was the most challenging keeping Golfers and Play-Traffic damage under control?
I would say that it was not a “time of year” or “holiday”, but the yearly “Member Guest” was always challenging if there was wet weather, super dry weather, or super-hot weather. The Member Guest was basically a three-day event, so weather always played a big part in the show. Every employee wants to put out a great product for the yearly Member Guest, from GM, Chef, to Golf Pro, Superintendent, and their staffs.
I was fortunate most of my career to have long running Greens and Golf committee chair-people with usually “I”, or “S” personalities.
(DISC Personalities) but one year there was a change to a “D” personality Golf Committee chairman. The week of the Member Guest was one of the wettest on record and we did not have continuous cart paths. For years I explained how continuous cart paths would allow carts to run all day with cart path only restrictions on wet days, then we would not have to cancel carts during wet weather. Our cart paths ended at the each tee box and started again near the greens.
The biggest problem I saw with continuous cart paths was that golf balls would hit them and fly everywhere, or we didn’t have enough play at 12-13,000 rounds to worry about continuous cart paths.
The club even bought 10 pull carts for the Pro Shop to rent on rainy days and even tried the “Follow You” electric pull carts. That died out over time, but I always got grumblings when I had to cancel carts. We had a couple of caddies but not enough. So, with the wettest ever week for Member Guest, the new Golf Committee chairman came to meet me and tell me that we were going to run carts no matter what the weather. He made up his mind.
We ended up getting over five or six inches of rain that week and the course felt like a swamp.
It was bad enough trying to make the course playable but what I saw happening I had never seen before. On their own, most players decided to keep their carts in the rough right next to the length of each fairway. From the end of the cart paths at the tees, to the beginning of the cart paths at each green. By the end of three days, we had 2-wheel track ruts next to every fairway from beginning to end, about 4 or 5 inches deep!
On Monday we tried everything to roll back down these ruts everywhere on the golf course. As you can imagine, there was never much chance of getting this back in shape by rolling. We would need to fill dirt, pack, and seed. Which meant the expense of time, labor, and money.
I remember that golf committee chairman driving out to see me one day while we were trying to fix 1000’s of yards of ruts next to fairways, and I said something to the effect of, “Just trying to get all of these ruts back into shape.” I remember him saying before he drove off, “That’s what we hired you for.” We had continuous cart paths soon after that Member Guest! (LOL!)
News Flash: Golf Carts Damage Turf
Why Are Carts Occasionally Restricted To Cart Paths
-Mark S. Merrick, CGCS Retired
Introducing ‘Merrick Mondays’, a segment where we hear from Mark Merrick, our resident brand Ambassador, Chief ‘Cool” Officer, and general source of wisdom and secrets of the universe, to spotlight a dose of interview-style content, weekly.