Wild Weather

[DennisMiller]

I'm sure all of you have heard about the ridiculous weather here in the SE United States. Here in Miami, it was 37 degrees when I opened the door to let my dogs out at 7:45. There was ice on the windshield of my car and frost on the roof. It's only supposed to get up to the mid 50s today and I sent a text to my surrogate granddaughter who is the accountant for the golf course to ask how many cancellations they had yesterday and today. Fortunately, it's supposed to start warming up by tomorrow and the rest of the week, the highs will be in the high 60s or low 70s, perfect golf weather.

OK, I can hear you all laughing, thinking, "Wow, Dennis is such a wuss"... And you are right.

What's the worst weather you would play in? At what point would you draw the line and say it's too nasty to play?

And believe me when I tell you, I really wish I could tolerate cold weather better. My brother-in-law Bob was born, raised and has lived his whole life in Redding, California and regularly plays in freezing temperatures. Of course, he's crazy, because he married my sister, but that's another matter...

 

[PaulBoy]

Hi Dennis ... Don't expect much sympathy from this side of the pond! - 37* Fahrenheit is about 3* Celsius - We have this weird system in the UK with temperature? - We talk about the cold in terms of Celsius & the heat in terms of Fahrenheit? - Anyway, I have played golf when the temperature has been below 0* Celsius / 32* Fahrenheit - The course is usually frozen & you can't usually play on the greens as the root structure gets damaged? - My course puts us on "frost greens" which are basically temporary holes on the green aprons or fairways (some courses have temporary greens for use in the winter months?)
Currently in my area (South of England) it has been very wet for well over a month & our course will close if there is too much standing water - I don't mind playing in a bit of rain, but draw the line at heavy rain with wind as you get soaked very quickly regardless of how good your waterproofs are!

 

[Robbo016]

Yup no sympathy here - its wet, wild and stormy and windy... pretty much zero golf atm as courses resemble bogs...

 

[DennisMiller]

Hey Paul & Rob, good to see your voices...

Rain here in Miami usually evacuates the courses, because there's way too much lightning that almost always comes with it. I do carry a rain suit in my bag, preferring it to an umbrella if the rain is continuous. Even if I'm just driving off the course, I'll cover my clubs and put on the jacket so I'm not a lightning rod.

Unlike your standing water problem though, our courses usually recover literally in minutes. The sandy soil and water management canals that are all over the place absorb the rain quickly and there's very rarely standing water within 30 minutes of even the heaviest rainfall.

It's up to 52 degrees right now, but there's a breeze and it's still too uncomfortable for me. I'm probably wearing as many layers in my house right now as you would wear to play in freezing weather.

 

[Bonobobananas]

Played at Sheringham this week in 2°C and 45mph gusts. Hit over the back of a 440 yard par 4 with driver 9i, then hit driver driver 6i into a 500y par 5 🤣
Had a purple face at the end.
So.
No sympathy 🤣

 

[trojan615]

i played in a golf monthly forum event at royal st georges / cique ports and another i cant remember a few years ago..... the golfing gods let us play rsg on the final day in ok weather but the rcp day was brutal.....it was a nine out nine back route and i remeber the rain was blowing up into my face when i addresed the ball on the way back in.... no one knew the winner as everyones scorecard turned to mush despite getting new ones in the half way (rescue) hut on the 9th.

the wind must have been about 40 mph into our face coming back before gusting..... i hit solid driver, 2 hybrid, 5 iron to a 430yd hole....

 

[DennisMiller]

i played in a golf monthly forum event at royal st georges / cique ports and another i cant remember a few years ago..... the golfing gods let us play rsg on the final day in ok weather but the rcp day was brutal.....it was a nine out nine back route and i remeber the rain was blowing up into my face when i addresed the ball on the way back in.... no one knew the winner as everyones scorecard turned to mush despite getting new ones in the half way (rescue) hut on the 9th.

If I played in conditions like that, my life insurance policy would refuse to pay off, claiming it was attempted suicide.

 

[DennisMiller]

The opposite of my original post about cold weather is now solidly in effect here in Miami. It was 90 degrees yesterday and supposed to get up to 93 degrees, about 34 degrees Celsius... And the humidity is about 75%, in other words, if I played golf today, I would boil instead of bake.

I know a few people who put their golf clubs away for the summer. Considering some meds I take with side effects that make me suffer poor heat tolerance, I'm really scared I might become one of those people. The other day, I had to quit on the 8th hole when my ears plugged up and my neck got so stiff I couldn't turn.

The cold, windy, rainy weather on your seaside links courses is looking really good to me right now.

 

[Robbo016]

UK in middle of heat wave and temps pushing close to 100 in some places for next few days. UK doesn't cope well with this as trains / schools in chaos....

too hot for walking on a course for me

 

[DennisMiller]

UK in middle of heat wave... too hot for walking on a course for me

Those might be words I never expected to hear from across the pond.

I played 9 holes on Monday morning. It was 90 degrees at 10 AM with 75% humidity. I was sweating so much, I drank a 16 ounce bottle of Powerade and 2 of my 24 ounce insulated bottle of ice water, but never felt the need to go to the bathroom.

I was so destroyed, after I showered, I fell asleep for nearly 3 hours. I know a couple daily meds I take have pooe heat tolerance as a side effect, but it's scaring the hell out of me that I might becoming one of these people in Miami who actually puts their clubs away for the summer like people up north do for the winter.

An aside... our house is abobut 2700 square feet and we are looking forward to selling it and downsizing, but I still want something with either a garage or, preferably, a room with high ceilings so I could have a simulator. I feel like that might just be the only solution for my summer golfing future.

 

[PaulBoy]

UK in middle of heat wave and temps pushing close to 100 in some places for next few days. UK doesn't cope well with this as trains / schools in chaos....

too hot for walking on a course for me

I'm in Southern England where Met Office has Red Alert in place! - I played early on Monday teeing off at 0700
It was 'only' 20*C when we set off & @ 3hrs later 27*C
Today it was due to reach 37*C so I teed off at 0630 (21*C) we only played 14 holes & it was 28*C when we finished @ 2hrs later
There was about 20x people going out when I pulled out of the car park at 0930 - Car was showing 29*C already - Too hot for my pasty Irish complexion!

 

[DennisMiller]

I'm in Southern England where Met Office has Red Alert in place! - I played early on Monday teeing off at 0700
It was 'only' 20*C when we set off & @ 3hrs later 27*C
Today it was due to reach 37*C so I teed off at 0630 (21*C) we only played 14 holes & it was 28*C when we finished @ 2hrs later
There was about 20x people going out when I pulled out of the car park at 0930 - Car was showing 29*C already - Too hot for my pasty Irish complexion!

By my calculation, 37C = 98F... DAMN!!! What kind of humidity do you have to go with that?

I may have told the story before, but when I discovered my birth family out in the Pacific NW and visited in person for the first time, the lack of humidity amazed me. My brother-in-law Bob is such an avid golfer, he makes me look like I never heard of the game. He belongs to Gold Hills Golf & Country Club in Redding, CA and took me around the neighborhood streets to show me a lot of the course. It was 100 degrees that day, but only something like 15% humidity.

I decided right away that I'd rather bake than boil any day.

 

[DennisMiller]

Today doesn't seem as humid, but what good does it do to have a nice day when you have to sit home all day waiting for the refrigerator repairman to show up and finish the job.

I've been on 24/7 ice replacement duty since Tuesday.

 

[DennisMiller]

It's 12:51 PM and outside, where I just finished putting new grips on one of my iron sets, it's 91 degrees, 76% humidity and feels like 106... Kill me NOW...

I know people who put their clubs away for the summer and I'm feeling so demotivated about playing in this weather, I'm really scared I'm becoming one of them. At the least, for the moment, I'm definitely just a 9 hole golfer.

 

[DennisMiller]

I guess we are at the opposite end of the weather spectrum from when I started this thread back in February.

This morning was 92F with 70% humidity. (I just had to edit humidity from humility) It did beat me down and make me feel humble.

Every time I bent over to stick a tee in the ground or pick up my ball out of the hole, I felt light headed. I don't remember such a brutal summer, even for here in Miami.

 

[PaulBoy]

Nothing as bad as the 37C / 98F I reported above in June, but we have not had a break in the weather since, with temperatures in the mid to high 20C's or low 30C's & zero rain in Southern England - Golf course I play looks more like a desert, with only the greens being watered - I had a weekend in Devon recently (SW England) & the sea breeze there makes a lot of difference? - Nice to walk around at any time of day, rather than my current regime of crack of dawn tee times for golf & then hiding indoors for the rest of the day!

 

[DennisMiller]

Hi Paul, nice to see your voice...

Maybe I should move there. Your burned out fairways might help me recover some lost distance that modern tech hasn't given me back. This is our rainy season here in Miami. It rains every day at some time or other, sometimes multiple times per day. The best is when it rains at bedtime. We have a beamed ceiling in our master bedroom, so the rain on the roof makes a soothing sound. Good sleeping weather!

 

[Robbo016]

I was down in Devon (Saunton) recently for a game, it was like 10degs cooler down there than home, which was lovely for golf. But everywhere is fried here and firm, fast and bouncy but luckily tee boxes, greens were first class so it was a good test of golf and good fun. I think the UK courses will need to rethink approach to irrigation if we continue to see heat waves / summers like this... I also need to get Air Con in my house!

 

[DennisMiller]

Regardless how much they water, certain courses here still burn out this time of year. When we don't get the usual amount of rain, an aerial view looks weird. The water turns parts green, but the parts the sprinklers don't reach turn brown, so there are large triangles of burned out grass in the rough. That has led to many courses planting St Augustine grass as rough, a tough grass with runners that are damn near impossible to get out of with any control.

Killian Greens, where I play most, rerouted their irrigation system a couple years ago during Covid, when there was little play. It's a really flat course, but has a few slightly sloping fairways, so they routed the fairway sprinklers on the high sides to let gravity pull water down to the low sides. It's worked pretty well.