In areas with cold winters, many golfers wonder what the maintenance staff and superintendent do all winter. It may come as a surprise that even with the grass not growing, a superintendent’s to-do list is always fairly extensive. The maintenance staff may work a more consistent schedule of 40 to 50 hours each week during the winter – compared to the 60 hours per week that can be common during summer – but they are still busy. Here are just a few of the common tasks performed during the winter at golf courses:
- Annual equipment maintenance and repair
- Maintenance facility improvements
- Tree maintenance
- Construction or drainage projects
- Cart path repair
- Refinishing tee markers and other accessories
- Snow removal
- Monitoring the course for ice
- Landscape cleanup
- Covering putting greens
Winter in the Northeast isn’t typically very conducive to playing golf, but the maintenance staff is still hard at work trying to get the course better for next season. The best athletes in the world use the offseason to prepare for the following year, and the same is true for golf course maintenance staffs.
