Snow covers portions of East Mountain Country Club Friday afternoon
WESTFIELD—While this warm weather is tantalizing to golfers in the area, courses may not be as great as the weather is—though they still may be playable.
Local courses are anticipating opening up the fairways and putting greens as early as Monday next week, as long as the weather continues to be warm and the snow continues to melt away. However, the course conditions could be less than desirable, with premium course conditions still several months away.
“I’m realistically hoping to be up and running by next week,” Ted Perez, golf professional at and co-owner of East Mountain Country Club, said. “If it’s 60 degrees the snow does melt fast and if we get some rain that will melt it even faster. But my realistic and hopeful thinking is maybe Monday or Tuesday is when we reopen.”
And all this melting will leave for some potentially soggy and muddy conditions on some courses. However, according to Perez, this may not be too bad because of the lack of frost that was apparent on the ground recently.
“As far as what the conditions will be, I don’t think much frost is out there so as it melts it’s also draining,” Perez said. “So once the snow is gone everything will be in play, very few unplayable areas.”
And over at Shaker Farms Country Club, similar conditions are expected.
“I think the snow is clearing up and the members are going to be out there as early as next week,” Nancy Kotowitz, co-owner of Shaker Farms Country Club, said.
Brian Knapp skiing at Shaker Farms Country Club Thursday (photo provided by Nancy Kotowitz)
“It’s going to be wet because there was a lot of snow but one of the things we did here was did a lot of drainage,” Kotowitz said. “This course is usually pretty wet but with the drainage we did it is a lot better.”
Kotowitz said that the course will be in OK condition to begin next week, but eventually the course will reach its full potential—which may be as soon as mid-spring.
“I would say in May conditions should be really good,” she said “I used to say June, but just because of all the drainage we have done it will be May this year.”
Though as of right now, the recent gush of warm weather has made a menagerie of spring and winter activities available. Kotowitz said that while the greenskeepers have been out tending to the course, a cross-country skier was seen dashing through the remaining snow on Thursday.
As for East Mountain Country Club, Perez said that good grass growth—which will mean good playing conditions—could happen as early as April but the weather has to cooperate.
“Until the ground gets to 55 degrees nothing will grow,” he said. “You don’t really have any new growth until the ground gets warm, so that won’t be until the latter part of April or early May.”
Still, none of this has stopped golfers from calling and seeing when the course will be open. Perez said that they have had an estimated 50 calls in just one day this week, and Kotowitz has also been fielding calls each morning asking about conditions.
They aren’t local calls though, both Perez and Kotowitz said.
“The golfers are anxious,” Perez said. “You don’t get too many local calls but you get calls from the Berkshires, Vermont, New Hampshire.”
Until the snow is gone though, players must practice what the game tends to wear down—patience.
“All I can do is wait, right now it’s a waiting game,” Perez said. “You can’t stand and watch the course.”
