Better late than never.  After a long dry season some timely rain fell in mid August to early September. It’s been a warm early start to fall with virtually no frost as of yet.

I don’t think I’ve experienced a start of the year like this. It seemed like we went from winter with a later-than-normal opening to full-bore summer. May was one of the warmest in history and I think we’ve had more humidity so far this year than ever. At Riverside we’ve made 2 applications of fungicide to combat summer stresses already and it’s not July yet. As well, in late May/June we saw a flush of growth that I’ve never seen before.

Although the golf season started later than most years, above normal temperatures in May have most courses in great condition for the time of year. It has been very dry throughout the province and in the Saskatoon area we’ve had 0 amount of precipitation in May. The South Saskatchewan River is as low as I can remember in the past 50 years.

After one week of spring, winter returned at many areas of the province in the south up to the Saskatoon area with areas receiving from 6-20 cm of snow. Temperatures are predicted to be back to normal early next week with some courses hoping to open the last week of April—through to early May.

After one of the nicest falls for golf and putting our courses to bed for the winter, it looks like winter is here to stay.

Despite poor travelling conditions, it was great to see so many people at the Fall Wind Up. We had great feedback on the quality of te talks, and as per usual, the networking was excellent. It’s always great to catch up after a long season.

With rising costs, we had to increase the registration fee to $125, which I feel is still a bargain to be able to obtain 5 CEC’s towards renewing your pesticide license. Thanks go to Kim for putting together the Zoom opportunity at the last minute. We had 17 extra people take part via Zoom due to the poor weather conditions.

September has been a beautiful month, weather-wise, with sunny above normal temps and as I write this on Sept 29 it is a sunny 28°. Although the leaves are changing colours, most remain on the trees providing excellent golf conditions.

Here we are in the dog days of August.  It’s been a long grind, we are starting to lose daylight, we are losing patience with the golfers and the summer staff who are all leaving to go back to school over the next 2 weeks.  September and early October is my favourite time of the golf season, with cooler nights, pleasant temperatures with usually ideal turf conditions and contrast with changing colours.

From all reports I hear around the province, golf courses seem to be all recording above average rounds of golf.  As I was getting ready for work this morning I noticed how much darker it’s getting, then I realized there’s under 100 days of golf left in the season.  Thank Goodness!

Well, it has finally warmed up and the grass is  growing.  After a cool start to June, we are having good amounts of rain, with some areas receiving a lot of rain.  Temperatures have come up to normal around the province.

After a very cool April/early May, things are finally starting to kick in with some above 0 overnight temperatures.  Most courses did not open until the end of April and many opened in May.  At Riverside we opened on May 3 which in the 50 seasons I have worked there was only the 4th time we had a May opening with 1 of them being the 2020 COVID May 15 opening.