In_The_Rough
Tour Winner
I suppose it depends on the soil base they have and drainage. An example is Gleneagles who remain open all through winter and dont do winter tees or greens, no mats, no pegging, no moving balls into the first cut etc the only thing they do is preferred lies and course closed for Frost or snow.
Come summer they have 3 immaculate courses and par 3 course.
Courses with really poor drainage and obvious mud routes do need to take action though, not easy for the poor groundstaff, whats the solution for them? well one course I know with that issue changes the course layout to avoid these obvious areas, not every course can do this though.
Thought I had heard about 1 of the courses having drainage problems at Gleneagles though. However Gleneagles I suspect will have a huge course maintenance budget at state of the art equipment out of the reach of nearly all golf clubs, I suspect it gets nowhere near the volume of players on the course during winter as your average local club though as they have more than 1 course and the cost may put people off as well so you cannot really compare it to most courses but I see what you are saying. As I say no easy answer and I agree I too have some sympathy for the groundstaff