Tim Harty, The Business Times

As of the final weekend of March, the whine of golf-cart motors returned to Tiara Rado and Lincoln Park golf courses.

The sound replaced the whine of those golfers who vocalize their displeasure when the two City of Grand Junction-owned golf courses bar the use of carts from Dec. 1 until late March.

Whiny golfer who hates walking: “Really, Lincoln Park? Are you kidding me, Tiara Rado?”

Lincoln Park: “Yes, really.”

Tiara Rado: “No, we’re not kidding.”

And now that the City of Grand Junction has done it a few times, and golfers saw the results in the spring, the disgruntled questions have diminished.

Tim Tafoya, the director of golf at both courses, said the measure of “walking only” is needed, especially during the Grand Valley’s commonly dry winters, to avoid breaking and killing dormant grass. Avoiding that damage makes a dramatic difference in how quickly the turf returns to optimal condition come spring.

Jay Valentine, the city’s general services director, said he heard a lot of complaints “and not understanding” from golfers during the first year that the city implemented “walking only” for winter golf. After last year, however, people saw how quickly the course came back and realized why “walking only” was implemented. 

“This year, literally, hardly any complaints from the golfers,” Valentine said. “They understand now what the difference is if you keep carts off there for that period of time. Short-term pain, long-term gain kind of thing.”

Other golf courses noticed, too.

“That’s kind of taken off in the valley,” Tafoya said. “I know Bookcliff and Adobe, they followed our lead as far as closing, and Chipeta as well, closing down their golf carts just for the lack of water.

“So, it’s kind of cool. It only helps the golf course. It kind of falls in line with the conservation and the (USGA Water Conservation) playbook. … It’s only good for the golf course to keep that traffic off there in the dry months.”

IF YOU REALLY NEED A CART…

The Golf Club at Redlands Mesa takes a different approach to carts in the winter months because it prohibits walking the course year-round. You have to use a cart, and it’s built into the price to play.

So, Redlands Mesa Director of Golf Maxwell Weckerly said, “The entire winter we ran carts perfectly normal. We never work ‘cart path only,’ we never don’t allow carts. We work around it really well.”

NOT JUST DRY, EXCEPTIONALLY DRY

Adobe Creek National Golf Course General Manager Joe Toke has worked at Adobe Creek since 1999, and this winter was as dry as any he can remember at the golf course.

“Twenty-six years at Adobe – many winters I’ve been through, and the summers – this is the worst I can remember coming out of the winter,” Toke said. “This year is bad, and it’s showing at all the courses, whether it be Tiara Rado, Bookcliff Country Club, Adobe Creek, Lincoln Park.”

As he thought about it a little more, Toke backed off that claim a smidge and offered, “There could’ve been a worse one – I’ve been here so many years – but that’s the one that I remember, this one being worse than most.”

Adobe Creek does have an advantage, though, when it comes to readying the course for spring play. It doesn’t have to wait for irrigation water to arrive.

“We have water shares out of the Colorado River, so we’re able to start watering the minute it gets above freezing at night,” Toke said. “If we started pumping water in our lines, and it’s still freezing at night, there’s a chance that the lines burst, and we’ve got more problems. So, really we don’t start watering until the beginning of March usually, and the other courses have to wait till April.”

Redlands Mesa doesn’t have the Colorado River in its back yard, but it isn’t at the mercy of waiting until irrigation water is available. That’s because when the winter is particularly dry, it will pay for water to use sooner.

“We do have private water that we have access to, and we have different water sources,” Weckerly said. “We haven’t really been too negatively affected by the dry winter, because we do have lots of other options for it.”