The lakes are still partially frozen, but the fairways are free of snow and the golf season has officially begun in Thunder Bay.
Steve and Dan Delin were the first to tee it up on Tuesday at Dragon Hills Golf Course, which owner Michael Komar says survived the winter with flying colours, is all but free of frost in the ground and has all nine summer greens in operation.
“It feels great,” said Steve Delin. “A couple of years ago we were out here on the 15th of March, but this is great too.
Just three weeks ago he said he couldn’t imagine playing golf in Thunder Bay on the first day of spring, given the amount of snow that had fallen on the city.
“I didn’t realize it was going to get this warm and melt,” he said.
“My daughter went to London for a week and she came back and the snow was this high in my backyard and now it’s gone.”
It’ll take a few rounds to get the rust out though, he added.
“I’m hitting a few good ones, a few bad ones. It’s my first time out, so you can’t expect too much,” Delin said.
Komar on Monday said he hoped to open the course by Thursday or Friday, but another shot of spring sunshine had him reconsidering his decision on Tuesday.
“We got kind of caught off guard here because we had snow until about two weeks ago because we had snow, now all of a sudden it’s 25 degree weather for like four or five days. Every day the weatherman is saying it’s going to be rain or it’s gonna snow or it’s going to be cold and it’s another 25 degrees … and here we are and all the snow is gone in about a week,” Komar said.
“We had lots of phone calls yesterday and we didn’t open and today we got phone calls and we said we’d open up this afternoon, depending on weather conditions. So we checked the course out at about 11 o’clock this morning and it’s beautiful – and fairly dry actually.”
Northern Lights Golf Course opened its driving range last Friday, while city director of golf Tom Forsythe said he expects the city courses to open well ahead of last year’s schedule, though preferred not to give an exact date until he inspected the courses for winter damage.
