Get Your Course Ready for Late Fall and Winter

A November landscape can really transform your golf course. Beautiful autumnal trees have a mix of green and red leaves, the weather is brisk enough without being too chilly, and the sunlight isn’t beating overhead and making the course difficult to peer across. But a shift to November also brings more rain, a downpour of leaves and nuts, and burrowing animals looking for the right place to wait out the winter. Shore up your golf course for the end of fall by considering these changes to any part of your golf course under renovation:

 

• Be selective about your plant choices. Trees help make up a golf course, but you don’t want them raining down debris, leaves, and sticky sap. You also want varieties that require relatively little care and still look great in the winter. Find local species of evergreens that don’t shed debris during the fall or have vigorous flowering in the spring. Easy trees not only help you manage your landscaping budget; they keep your bunkers clear of unwanted obstacles and contamination.
• Improve your bunkers with all-season liners. Not all liners are created equal, and late fall weather can be hard even in new installments. Find liner materials that grip onto sand even during adverse weather conditions and don’t become overly brittle in the cold. It’s also important to invest in liners that the local wildlife can tear up: burrowing animals can cut through a flimsy liner and start contamination below the sand’s surface where you won’t catch it until it’s too late.

Whether you’re in the South where winter weather hasn’t yet shown its head or you’re in the North and you’ve already had a few cold weeks, you know which parts of your course will need a little work to make it to the spring. Take the opportunity to go to ZLINE Bunker Systems and find long-term improvements.