With No Snow On Ground, Golfers Played Through Middle Of Month

By Andy Hutchison

Last year at this time, the greens and fairways were buried in a couple feet of snow. What a difference a year makes for golfers in Newtown, who have been using their clubs much more than their shovels this winter.

Rock Ridge Country Club stayed open until late December and Newtown Country Club remained open for business until the middle of this month — both clubs hosted rounds through a time that is traditionally spent by golfers dreaming of warm sunshine and swoosh sounds of their five wood follow-through swings.

Sure, it may not have been 70-something degrees, but a chance to chip and putt for an afternoon was a welcomed opportunity for golf enthusiasts during the past several weeks.

Newtown Country Club hosted about 15 rounds of golf on weekdays and 40 or so on weekends while Mother Nature has cooperated after putting the kibosh on golfers’ plans to tee off on the last weekend of October with a fluky snowstorm. Until earlier this week, there hadn’t been any white stuff since.

“I can’t remember being open all the way until the middle of January in a long time,” Paul Miller, who is going into his 18th season as head professional at Newtown Country Club this spring, said late last week when the club was still operating. “We have a lot of hardcore guys that just keep going and they’re happy we’re open.”

More than 50 golfers played on New Year’s Day, Miller said. Even this past chilly Friday the 13th was a lucky day for some golfers who got in a round early in the day before it began to cool off to seasonable conditions in the latter half of the day.

Miller said that when temperatures remained in the upper 30s to low 40s and the sun is out, golfers, too, were out. “As long as there’s no snow on the ground and the greens don’t freeze too much, we can stay open,” he added.

Finally, things got a little more seasonable as subfreezing temperatures and a light snow fall whited out the greens late on Monday, officially ending the season at Newtown Country Club. “It was fun while it lasted,” Miller said.

Bill Flood, Rock Ridge Country Club’s general manager and golf professional, said the mild fall was a nice boon to business after that October snowstorm, which wiped out power in parts of town for more than a week, as well as Tropical Storm Irene in late August, which also knocked out power and halted business.

“We were going to have an unbelievable year, but the two storms shut us down for seven and ten days. But the nice thing was we picked up all that nice weather in November and the in the first 20 days of December,” Flood said.

Both Miller and Flood said the unusual and welcomed winter business boosted revenue at their pro shops and restaurants.

Flood said green covers were put on at the end of the calendar year for plush conditions in what he hopes will be an early start to the 2012 season. Flood said that, weather permitting, Rock Ridge will reopen at the beginning of March. He is optimistic that the economy is coming back and with it the golfers will come as well.