Local Golf Report: Water is the talk of the early season

For the months of February and March, all anyone could talk about is snow. And that includes local golfers and golf course owners. Now, after one of the harshest winters on record around the Hi-Line, the golf talk is turning from snow to water.

While spring temperatures have finally ended what was a long delay to the local golf season, the wait and see to golfing in Havre and around the Hi-Line isn't quite over yet. That's because lowland flooding is occuring all over the region, and our golf courses aren't immune.

As it relates to our local courses, Prairie Farms Golf Course has taken on quite a lot of water from this past week's Milk River flood. The course started seeing water spilling on it early last week, and it continued to rise through Friday afternoon. The Milk River has since subsided a bit, but Prairie Farms has experienced the most flooding it's seen since the course opened more than a decade ago.

Still, the course was able to open over the weekend. According to the Prairie Farms Facebook Page, the course is open to members, but no carts are being allowed, and holes 7 and 8 are not accessable.

Conversely, at this time last year, golfers had been playing local courses since the middle of March, and league golf was getting underway. Fast forward a year, and things are drastically different.

With snow total records being set all over the Hi-Line, Beaver Creek Golf Course, Prairie Farms Golf Course and the Chinook Golf Club have been blanketed with snow, lasting until just last week, when things finally started to melt off for good.

But, with so much snowmelt and runoff, local courses are not out of the woods. The most drastic Milk River flooding last week occured east of Havre, and has certainly affected both the Chinook Golf Club and the Harlem Golf Course. Harlem's course was completely under water as of last Friday, while the Chinook area experienced quite a bit of flooding, but, as of Sunday afternoon, Chinook High School Golf Course Mike Seymour said Chinook's course itself is in good shape and is not flooded at all.

And speaking of delays, the local Class B-C golf season was delayed drastically this year, due more to winter handing on in March and the beginning of April. Seymour, the longtime Sugarbeeter golf coach, said that his teams practiced outside for the first time just last Thursday, and also played their first two meets of the regular season last week. Before that, Chinook, like many other schools, were using golf simulators to practice. The Beeters made use of a simulator in the high school auditorium, while the Box Elder Bears and other local squads were able to get work in on the Beaver Creek Golf Course simulator.

And in the case of BCGC, the flood waters have also stayed away, and last week, course owner Rob Gomke said that the course was very close to being open for play, and in fact, the course was open over the weekend.

Gomke said golf leagues at BCGC are nearing and there is meeting at BCGC tonight for men's league. The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. at the clubhouse. Chinook also has its league meeting set for Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. at the clubhouse.

Winter and flooding has also hampered the Montana State University-Northern golf teams, but the Lights and Skylights, of head coach Dave Boles, are in Arizona this week nonetheless, for the Frontier Conference championships. Good luck to the Northern golfers, and we'll have results in next week's From Tee to Green.

And while Northern is golfing this week, and so will high school golfers, as Seymour told me they are trying to squeeze in as many rounds as possible over the next two weeks, as state tournaments near, the talk, at least for some time yet, will continue to be about the weather as it relates to loacl golf.

NOAA is continuing to predict a wet and colder May, and possibly record-setting wet weather in June. So, that means, the flooding that our local golf courses have already experienced, might not be over.

Yes, that's right, it looks like Mother Nature isn't going to let up just yet. She's seemed mad at Havre for the last eight months now, and she's not showing any signs of easing off. And that's no fun for those of us who love golf, because, we waited through one of the worst winters we'ver ever seen, and, at least speaking for myself, dreaming abvout golf is one of the things that gets me through a winter. Now, with flooding, wind, cold and perhaps a lot of rain still on the horizon, it's getting harder and harder to dream about golf.

Still, as frustrating a start to the golf season as it's been, golf season is here now. So, I would like to take this opportunity to invite all of you to contribute to this weekly golf column, which will normally apprear every Tuesday. Any golf information, for local leagues and tournaments, to hole-in-one's and personal achivements, from charity events, to anything else you might think is interesting, please, drop me a note, and I will include it in this column throughout the rest of the spring and summer. Send any infor to [email protected].

So, now that the first column is in the books, even if it was filled with a little gloom, golf has finally arrived. Hit em' good everybody.