Golf course discussion for week of April 2021
 

Played Havana about 2 months ago, green, fairway, and tees were in very bad shape. We took them out of our rotation. Put them back in an played there today, 4/26/2021. Not a whole lot of improvement progress. Many of the greens still had places that were burnt out or just sand. All of the greens had many many weeds. Tees were in better shape, but a lot of the fairways still had very bare and thin on grass.

Hard to believe as much money has the golf courses net, they can't put and keep a course in top notch shape. We are paying premium dollars for muni course condition, just sad.

Thanks for the update. Havana is the only champ course I haven't played yet this year and was wondering if it was time to give it a shot. Apparently not yet.

Until The Villages gets hurt bad enough in the pocket book don’t expect much improvement. I have been here for 15 years and these poor conditions aren’t unusual, except the deteriorating conditions seem to be more wide spread. Green fees continually on the rise. There past excuses were: not enough water & too much water. I played many times in the winter at Havana when the maintenance crew was cutting the non-existant grass in the rough kicking up nothing but dust. A friend of mine worked there and he told me they needed to keep the crew busy so they gave “the bald guy a haircut”. Courses were built cheaply, especially greens (from a reliable source) not to USGA specifications. They say that all the cart traffic (4 per group) has stressed the fairways. To an extent I’ll give in on that a bit, but unless players are driving on the greens and tees what happened there. On a positive note the grass at the Polo Field is in great shape, thick and lush. Priorities?

Many of the executive courses maintained by Havana are also in bad shape as well. Truman and Roosevelt come to mind.

This is nothing new at Havana. For as long as I can remember, Havana gets bad each winter, and tends to recover in the summer, but not really. It's a course that needs a complete re-work. Odd, isn't it, how Lopez, Glenview, and Tierra del Sol can be in such perfectly great shape and Havana in such poor shape?

Played Bonita Pass last night- Conditions so bad that it does not even qualify as a "Golf Course" . Better described as a "Cow Pasture"
No grass on tees and little on greens. Here ten years and never have seen this level of poor conditions on exec courses. Too many people for the number of courses. Need to return to limiting single passenger carts.

I will not pay $64 ($47 priority) to play in May when the norm is to reduce prices. Every year bids are placed to do the maintenance on the courses. My guess is low bid wins. Remember when they used to overseed the fairways and tees? Now that the developer has taken over the management....more money for them

Muni implications, no sir!
 

I take exception to your statement that implies a muni course has bad conditions. There are many muni courses that are in very good condition, some in better condition than some of your elitist and private CC courses.

Not likely when there aren't any Championship courses south of 44.

You are correct!
 

There are many Muni's better then the villages CC. Sorry for them. However, those muni's are often very expensive to play.

Kenya (part of Havana) has been closed since around the middle of March.

I played DW Field (a muni) in Brocton MA yesterday for $27, walking. It is in fantastic shape, with fast greens. It's in better shape than the club I belong to.

[QUOTE=Challenger;1935972]Played Bonita Pass last night- Conditions so bad that it does not even qualify as a "Golf Course" . Better described as a "Cow Pasture"
No grass on tees and little on greens. Here ten years and never have seen this level of poor conditions on exec courses. Too many people for the number of courses. Need to return to limiting single passenger carts.[/QUOTE]



Im trying to understand your solution to return to limiting passenger carts. BP has no par 4s so what would this do to help the condition of the tees and greens as you mention are in poor shape

Bonifay was in great shape this week.

Belle Glade was in great shape this week.

Kenya
 

We drove past Kenya yesterday and noticed that the fairways (#1 and #9 were all we could see) were aerated as the cores were all over the fairways. A step in the right direction hopefully.