No Revenue For Golf Courses Here
I live in Colorado Springs (at the foot of Pikes Peak), Colorado, and 9 out 10 years you can play golf year round, literally. In fact, my brother Gary and I played at least once a month during the winter months for 4 consecutive years here. Sure, we got the obligatory snowstorms, but they usually melted within a couple of days and we were playing golf again.
Not this year. We got our first blizzard in October, and the snow came every weekend until a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t get the break without snow and more importantly, we didn’t get the sunshine we normally get that helped melt the snow. Of course, that created a golfer’s cabin-fever in a big way, but the bigger issue is that the golf courses up and down the Front Range here (I-25 corridor) were not generating the revenue they normally count on each winter.
It’s a double-edged sword for the golf courses because on the one hand, the courses were getting lots of moisture and little play, which means the fairways and greens should be in spectacular shape this spring. On the other hand, there’s absolutely no way for golf courses to make up that lost revenue, and that ultimately affects the ability of a golf course to keep their staff hired.
And to show the examples of weather extremes here, the snow has been completely melted for a week or so, and already we’ve had our first brush fire just east of the city in the plains. It could be a long hot summer as well.