Rounds up; Berksdale to reopen
Lower fees for golf will mean more rounds, Golf Operations director Darryl Muldoon believes. Reopening the nine holes at Berksdale will help make room this summer when things get busy.
The course closed as an 18 hole course after a flood damaged the cart path in 2017. Later that summer, nine holes were open but, in June 2019, damage to a bridge was discovered and the nine holes were closed.
Muldoon has been working on a plan to reopen the course without the bridge, but that means two-way traffic on a section of the cart path that is steep. The golfers returning to the barn would also be in danger from golf balls hit from tee box number one. First, the plan was to install a fence to protect the returning golfers, but installing a fence would be expensive.
“How can we make this work?” Muldoon asked his course superintendents, and they came up with the plan to assign tee times in waves. Tee times will be assigned until the first golfers reach hole nine and then the tee times will stop while each group completes the course and returns safely to the cart barn. Not only will the golfers be safe from the first tee box, but traffic on the hill will also always be going in the same direction. When the golfers are returning up the hill, no one will be starting down.
The plan will have to be massaged, he warned, but he thinks it can work.
Several members of the Men’s Nine Hole Golf Association agreed.
“We want to see it open,” Joe D’Anna said, adding that it’s a good course for senior golfers. Other members of the group agreed.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he said.
Maintenance will be limited on the course because the staff is limited. Rollers won’t be used on the greens and mowing will be limited to once a week on fairways and roughs. Water and fertilizer will be limited as well.
Less mowing will make the greens slower, said Susan Nuttall, who is a member of both the Golf Committee and the Women’s Nine Hole Association.
“Good golfers won’t play on that course,” she predicted.
A few years ago, the fairways were allowed to grow longer than usual and golfers noticed their balls did not roll the same distance. This is important to many women golfers, she explained, because their drives aren’t as powerful and they count on the roll to make up distance.
Nuttall also expressed concern about nonmembers playing a course that is not well maintained and assuming other courses are the same. She believes an increase in rounds could be easily absorbed by the other existing courses.
Muldoon said he’s heard from other members of the same women’s group who are excited to have the opportunity to return to Berksdale. The only other ninehole course is Brittany, which is more difficult. Many members of the women’s group don’t play if the group is scheduled on Brittany.
Limiting the maintenance won’t have an immediate impact, he said, although, eventually, it will affect play.
Muldoon said the numbers of golfers in the golf groups are going up. His summer 2020 schedule has many days when groups using shotgun starts on the 18 hole courses will fill five of the six courses.
The total rounds played in January 2020 were up compared to 2019. When the new fee structure takes effect, members will be able to play 18 holes for $33 compared to $41 last year. That should result in more people playing golf, he said.