Snow Hole Positions

I finally managed to get out onto the golf course today.

Three of us played the Priors course and I just could not understand the position of some of the holes.

For those of you who know this course I'll take the third green as an example.

The green must be forty yards wide and twenty yards deep on the right hand side.

They had positioned the flat on the right hand side of the green, about ten yards from the right edge of the green, and about twelve yards from the front of the green.

I played a good pitch wedge onto the green and walked up the slope to find my ball on the green, but it was sitting on snow!

The ground staff had obviously been clearing the snow from the green and had managed to get most of the green cleared, but for whatever reason they hadn't finished the job.

So the hole was about two yards from the snow with plenty of clear green, so why didn't they move the hole into the middle of the cleared patch?

Now I don't know if it's not good for the green to put a new hole in when the ground is hard and cold.

The same thing happened on the 18th green, it was 105 yards to the flag so I hit a steady pitching wedge.

We could see from the tee that the flag was on the right hand side of the green, right where the only snow on the green was!

Does this kind of thing happen at your golf club?

Russ

Russell,

You are lucky they let you out there in the first place. Some Clubs are over protective of the course over the winter months. A number of courses are still closed, Waterlogged. Horsforth GC have dropped the compulsory use of Fairway Mats because people didn't want to use them, so didn't play or visit the Club over the winter.

Cutting new holes may have been difficult, it depends how deep the frost got into the Greens.

I find it funny when a Club says "We have to protect the main Greens this winter, we will have to play Winter Greens", and then order the Green-keepers to put them across the approach. Then when they allow flags to be put on the main Greens "they must be positioned on the front edge". So over the winter when the holes are off the Main Greens a ball hit towards it will bounce on the hard surface and end up in the middle of the main Green. The players then walk across it to play there shots. Filey GC has the right idea, Winter Greens are positions away from the Main Greens and have 12" holes. Good fun to play then, even in winter.

TheLyth 

I'm assuming that they haven't cut new hole positions due to the condition of the greens.

The one thing I cannot understand is why they started to clear the snow off the third green and didn't start near the cup and work away from it?

It appears as if they have started clearing the snow from where the snow had melted and worked towards the hole.

Then I'm assuming it was the end of the work day at they must have just packed up their tools and gone home!

The 18th green would be a problem for a temp green as it's all carry from tee to green.

One thing I was thinking about was why didn't the club ask for volunteers to help clear the greens of snow. They could have offered a free breakfast to everyone who helped.

Russ