Golfers in HRM will need to find excuses to get out of work even earlier this year.
The Grandview Golf and Country Club in Dartmouth will open up all 18 holes this Saturday. General manager and pro Gavan Fitzpatrick said yesterday it’s the earliest the course has opened in 27 years of operation, and possibly the earliest of any course in metro Halifax — ever.
“It just blows me away,” Fitzpatrick said. “The earliest we’ve opened before was April 14, that would have been 1999. It’s a record … it’s the earliest that I know of in history that somebody’s opened in Metro.”
Fitzpatrick said the conditions at Grandview are comparable to what they were in mid-April last year.
“We don’t have any moisture, any water on the golf course, and we also don’t have any ground frost right now,” he said, crediting the good conditions to a mild winter and an early spring.
Other courses Metro News was able to contact yesterday are also opening early. Granite Springs is shooting for April 1, Indian Lake the following day and Brightwood and Hartlen
Point for mid-April.
Fitzpatrick said the early open may take a toll on the Grandview course initially, but he’ll risk it.
“Obviously there’s not going to be very much growth on this golf course in the next three weeks,” he said. “But having said that, I’m a firm believer that you gotta take advantage of this Maritime weather when you can.”
Fitzpatrick has good reason to want to take advantage of unseasonably warm temperatures — the weather worked against golfers last season.
“We had such a bad season last year, we ended early, we had 21 days of rain in July,” he said.
