Waterlogged golf courses suffer closures, lower traffic during record rainy June

Golf courses in the Edmonton-area are struggling with persistent rain. Some have closed holes while others are closed altogether. Noah Rishaug reports.

Several – dare we say almost all? – local golf courses are water-logged following June’s record rainfall in the Edmonton area.

With 57 millimetres of the wet stuff falling on the city late Friday through Sunday, lifting June’s total to a record 262 millimetres, fairways and greens from Spruce Grove to Sherwood Park and from Fort Saskatchewan to Leduc have had to find ways to contend with water on saturated ground – or even close down altogether.

Eighteen of Strathcona County’s The Legends Golf and Country Club’s 27 holes are closed due to soggy conditions. Further south on the other side of Sherwood Park, Country Side Golf Club is closed completely for the next several days as staff allow the course to dry up. The Fort Saskatchewan Golf and Curling Club, too, has been closed for more than two weeks because of the rainfall and flooding on the course.

The city’s own Victoria Golf Course in the central river valley luckily has all 18 of its holes still open, although the rainy weather has dampened the number of tee times being booked.

“Attendance definitely takes a hit, whether it’s at the golf course or the driving range,” Brett Prosser, Victoria’s sport programmer, told CTV News Edmonton on Monday. “Last year was record numbers across the board for us, which makes the down year look so much more painful for us.”

At The Legends, superintendent Craig Spicer said the course’s bottom line has taken “a big hit, for sure.”

“When you can’t get people out and people aren’t playing, you have no revenue coming in,” Spicer told CTV News Edmonton. “Right now, we’re walking only, so you don’t have any of the cart traffic revenue coming in, so it’s severely impacting the business. We’re still having to cut grass, we’re still having to pay our employees to get out, so we’re still spending the money, but nothing’s coming in.”

Those are just a few examples of the conditions at the 80-plus public courses in and around Edmonton.

For local golfers, it’s meant a challenge finding out who is and isn’t open, and what is available.

Matt Sheremeta, who was out on the course at Legends on Monday, said finding tee times this year “has been rough.”

“I’m trying to get better at my golf game, but it’s quite tough when it’s raining all the time,” he told CTV News Edmonton. So, just finding any moment I can in between the rain to go out, just hit a few balls and get as much practice as I can, so I can improve my score."

In the meantime, Spicer’s grounds crew is running several water pumps to drain standing water to not only allow golfers to play and hopefully help speed the re-opening of its other 18 holes, but to prevent damage to the grass.

“If water sits there for too long ... if grass is growing, it will suffocate in that much water, so you have to get it off as quickly as possible,” he said.

And for as frustrating as June’s weather has made it to operate a golf course, Spicer said they’re “trying to keep a positive attitude and just keep going.”

“Once the water goes down, conditions will be great,” he said.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Noah Rishaug