Winter League / Winter tees start

[Redtraveller]

Hi All,

Quick question (UK clubs), when does your club move to winter tees and the winter league start?
Ours has a hard and fast rule of 1st October meaning 6 months ‘summer’ and 6 months ‘winter’.
Apart from a couple of bad days the full course is perfectly playable and in my opinion should not be on winter tees till November.

Would appreciate knowing info about other clubs

Thanks in advance

 

[Yorkshire Hacker]

I tend to agree with you. In my opinion, (depending on weather), the time to commence use of winter tees is when the clocks go back, which this year is on October 26th.
I played today, the day after a big storm, heavy rain and wind. It was still windy, the the wind had dried the course out remarkably well.
Our final match on summer tees will be a week on Saturday, if the weather remained dry, it would be too soon IMHO.

 

[ger147]

It is of course subject to change based on the weather thru October, but we still have the full course on throughout October and some qualifying comps still to play.

Our plan is winter tees out and preferred lies from 1st Nov and fairway mats from 1st Dec. At the other end, full tees and qualifying comps start back in April.

 

[SteveJay]

We have gone to preferred lies from today. Our winter series, the vice captains trophy, commences on 18th October. We will move off fairways and suspend qualifying scores later, depending on weather, which was in November last year.

 

[IanM]

Winter tees (mostly mats) starts today at Newport. Why this early I don't know. 6 months on the full course a year is too short.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

I believe we move onto winter tees this coming weekend and will be on them until April now. I'm actually playing 9 holes tonight, they may even be on now.

Our course isn't rated for winter tees so no qualifying comps until April now.

The above is common for courses around here.

 

[rudebhoy]

Our place has introduced a shorter "Blue" course. I suspect this will be used for the winter season.

 

[wjemather]

We move onto the "winter tees" (17 fixed artificial mats & 1 grass tee) in late October/early November and remain there through to late March/early April.
Exact dates usually depend on weather and level of growth/recovery on the main tees. However, this year they have been fixed well in advance to tie in with our new course ratings and stroke indexes becoming active on 27th October (to try and minimise confusion among members!).
We also try to play the March monthly medal (held on the last Saturday of the month) on the main tees if possible, even if we're back onto mats the following day for another week or two.
We don't run a 'winter league' as we run regular competitions (acceptable for handicapping) throughout the winter, as we have always done (since long before WHS).

 

[Neilds]

We no longer have a winter course. We did have a few shorter holes and mats on some of the par 3 tee boxes (couple of small boxes) but the course was rated so we could still have qualifying competitions. With the recent improvements to the drainage, I suspect we will be on the full course for the whole winter. the work done is amazing and the course is looking as good as it has in the time I have been there - notwithstanding the bits affected by the hot summer.

 

[D-S]

We only have 1 bit of Astro on one part of one tee platform, the rest are all grass. Part of our reconfiguration of the course with 5 sets of tees (65, 63, 60, 57 and 53) meant that we built a few extra platforms. This now means that we can cycle the ‘qualifying’ courses available on the day between the tee sets dependent on condition and wear.

 

[backwoodsman]

We have no fixed date for moving to winter tees - that up to the head greenie to decide. But the winter courses are rated, so we have qualifying all year round.

Just wondering... for those courses that do have a set of winter tees, any reason why they are not rated? (If they aren't already done that is...)

 

[doublebogey7]

We move to winter tee's and fairway matts when the Head Greenkeeper in consultation with the the Playing Committee decides conditions warrant it. Last year was around now, this year we are hoping to hold out until November given the mild and dry weather forecast in this neck of the woods.

 

[Burnsey]

Preferred lies from the weekend. Winter League when clocks go back.

Winter tees at my club to suit the course and expect them at the same time as Winter League. Very few not on some form of grass thankfully. Astroturf would do my head in for 18 tees.

No fairway mats.

 

[Golfnut1957]

As with others we have no fixed date, it appears to be weather/ course condition dependant.

We generally move onto the winter course as and when we move onto mats. This course is rated, although very few people submit GP cards. It's almost the same course as the summer one, par is 3 less and the course rating is 3 less than par, add in winter conditions, and it is impossible to play to your (summer) handicap.

An additional factor this year is the work that has just been carried out on the 10th. A new winter green, plus irrigation and drainage which won't be available until next year, is going to result in a hole cut in the fairway at some point.

With the weather holding out, I suspect the above will see us remaining on the main course for as long as possible, albeit with a move at some point onto mats.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

No fixed date on if we go to any winter tees , as and when , we will have the odd mat out maybe

Winter league started couple weeks ago

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

No fixed date on if we go to any winter tees , as and when , we will have the odd mat out maybe

Winter league started couple weeks ago

As @Arthur Wedge - plus when we had our course CR and SR reassessed for all tees last Sept we set tees for a Winter course and had that rated as a WHS qualifying course. Not sure I’ll be doing many rounds off winter course as my CH for it is 3

 

[Orikoru]

Our 'winter tees' are just the mats so hopefully this doesn't happen for quite a while yet! Certainly wouldn't be before the clocks have changed. I can't remember when it happens exactly, but I don't think there's an exact date - it's more of a gradual thing, because you might have 3 or 4 holes go onto mats if the tees on those are getting particularly muddy... then a few weeks later a few more holes will go onto mats... etc.

 

[Backache]

No fixed dates tees usually in Nov mats Nov/Dec, weather dependent.
Our winter course is now measured which puts me off qualifying competitions.

 

[nickjdavis]

We dont...we still run qualifiers throughout the winter and dont run a winter league.

We did build a load of artificial tees last winter and due to a misunderstanding about requirement to keep the course at a certain length, the greenkeeping staff embeded them in our main tees. Unfortunately all that did was concentrate footfall in one place and it utterly destroyed some of our tees which are not the biggest in terms of area...many still have not recovered.

There seems to be no plan to reintroduce these tees in more sensible locations this winter (I'd have expected to see work happening by now). The idea that the handicap sec came up with was that we locate tees close to either the current red, yellow or white tees and get the local rating team to use the existing rating information to build a "composite" course and generate a new men's card for play specifically over the winter. Ladies would play their existing red tees (although the yellows have been rated for ladies there is virtually zero desire from any lady to play off the yellows at any time).

Hopefully the composite course will still happen but work needs to start fast if it is going to be in place for when the weather gets bad.

 

[jim8flog]

We no longer use winter tees.

We have very large mats which get place on the usual tee and get moved often to avoid killing the grass.

When we had winter tees they were measured to allow for qualifying comps.