Owen Russell knew he had a problem when the smell hit him.

Russell, the superintendent at Markland Woods in Etobicoke, Ont. for the past eight years, ventured out on his course in February, worried about the impact of ice and cold on his club’s greens. Like many superintendents concerned about how the coldest winter in the last three decades would affect his course, Russell drilled through the ice to see what was happening with the grass underneath.

“I knew from the smell that we had a problem,” he says. “It smelled bad, sort of like rotten eggs.”

What Russell smelled was dead Poa annua grass, the most common grass found on older golf courses throughout North America. The grass is known to struggle if under ice for extended periods of time. In the case of many Ontario courses, ice encased golf course greens for more than three months, twice what most Poa grasses can withstand.

By the time Markland Woods’ greens were clear, Russell recognized the extent of the damage brought by the extreme cold. On most greens at least 50% of the grass was damaged or dead, and that amount rose to more than 70% on other greens.

“There was nothing we could do,” says Russell. “If we cleared them the temperatures were so cold we may have created more problems. It was a mess.”

What Markland Woods experienced is now being felt across Ontario courses where Poa is the covering for their greens. The damage to golf courses is widespread not only in Ontario, but across the northern U.S. as well. In Ontario some of the best-known golf courses—from host courses of the RBC Canadian Open like St. George’s to Hamilton Golf and Country Club through to modest public courses like Guelph’s Victoria Park East—have been hit by extensive damage. The cold, it turns out, doesn’t discriminate based on the cost of the green fee—it killed Poa greens regardless.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in the 25 years I’ve been in the business,” says Rhod Trainor, the superintendent at Hamilton where he’s prepared the golf course for three PGA Tour events. “It is like something out of a textbook. It is just a freak thing.”

The problems facing golf courses with Poa greens have different names, but the result is the same. Hit hard by a the coldest winter in years, Poa grasses were damaged by crown hydration, whereby grass takes in water and is hit by a sudden freeze; winter desiccation, which is essentially dehydration due to constant exposure to exposed, higher areas; depleted oxygen by anoxia; low temperatures; and ice. In some instances, superintendents say they were hit by all four problems, something that has never occurred before.

“It was a double-edged sword all winter,” says Rob Ackermann, superintendent at Weston Golf and Country Club in Toronto. “If you chose to do something to deal with the build-up on the greens you were exposing them to extreme cold and could kill them. If you chose to do nothing it could kill them.”

Ackermann used Ackermann used a combination of permeable and impermeable tarps on many of his greens to protect them from water and ice damage. But this year the tarps weren’t enough, and water managed to find its way to the grass anyway, leaving the club with seven temporary greens.

“The tarps help, but they couldn’t keep the water out,” he says, “and this could happen again next year. It is the worst devastation on golf courses that I’ve seen in my life.”

Now Ontario superintendents face decisions on how to deal with the difficult hand Mother Nature has dealt them. Do they reseed the greens with a strain of bent grass that will be more resilient to Ontario’s harsh winters, or do they try to grow Poa and reestablish it in the hope they don’t face a recurrence of the stunning cold?

“There’s one fix for this and that’s to grow bent grass,” says USGA agronomist Adam Moeller, who has been consulting with Ontario courses about the damage. “It is really your most reliable insurance policy, but it comes with a cost.”

Keith Bartlett, superintendent at St. George’s, has problems with Poa damage on most of the club’s greens, though he hopes to have most of the greens open by mid-June. Bartlett, who has worked as a superintendent for 22 years, says bent grass is the only true solution to the possibility of winter damage in Ontario. He adds that bent grasses take less water, fewer fertilizers, and create a better playing surface.

“To me this problem we’re facing is a wake-up call to the industry,” he says. “We’re just kidding ourselves if we think this won’t happen again.”

Trainor has been promoting a move to bent grass at Hamilton, which hosted the 2012 RBC Canadian Open, for some time. He was starting to feel optimistic about the chances of making the change when the club hired a new golf architect, Martin Ebert, and was hopeful the club might move that way when he put the historic course to bed in December. A late rain later that month, followed by intense cold, left him worried about what would happen in the spring.

“You know the Poa gets close [to dying] every year,” he says, noting most of his club’s 27 greens are damaged. “But this winter wasn’t typical.”

Ian McQueen knew he had an issue when he took a sample from one of his greens in February. The superintendent at Islington Golf and Country Club in Toronto, a course designed by the legendary Stanley Thompson, McQueen struggled to even get a sample from the frozen ground. As is typical for superintendents, he brought the sample indoors and attempted to restart the grass . . . only his sample wouldn’t grow. All that remained was for McQueen to wait two more months for the snow and ice to clear and find the extent of the damage. He found between 60 and 95% of the grass on Islington’s greens dead.

McQueen is suggesting having Islington not only plant bent grass, but completely rebuild the club’s greens with new strains of bent grass that keep Poa from taking hold. It is an ambitious project, but one that will limit future spring damage, he says.

“If you have a 90-year-old house, it isn’t easy to simply renovate the kitchen,” he says.  “You have to get to the heart of the problem.”

Like McQueen, David DeCorso has tough decisions to make. DeCorso is the superintendent at Victoria Park East, a 40-year old public course in Guelph. The course, like many of its age, has Poa greens, many of which have varying levels of damage from the ice and cold. Victoria Park East is owned by the DeCorso family, as is a newer course, Victoria Park Valley. The new course, with its bent grass greens, had no issues from the winter, but on the east course DeCorso has opened the season with three greens closed, and nine with tarps covering large sections as he attempts to grow grass. Closing the course to reseed with bent grass or sod the damaged greens isn’t financially viable, he explains, especially in a market where the long winter has already cut into paid rounds.

“This isn’t like the old days when the business had money for capital projects,” says DeCorso, who has been a superintendent for 22 years. “There’s not a lot of money to go around and we can’t afford the long-term solution of closing the course to solve the problem.”

DeCorso says many golfers have shrugged off this year’s problem as typical of Ontario courses during a long winter. But the situation is much more severe than other years, he points out, and he wonders if golfers will feel so charitable if public courses don’t recover by June.

“They are going to get impatient,” he says. “And they’ll make their point known by not spending their money at certain courses.”

At Markland Woods, Russell is preparing his course for incoming sod. The superintendent and the club have elected to make a drastic move and sod all of the club’s greens with bent grass that wasn’t used in another golf course construction project. There’s not enough bent grass sod to go around for other clubs to follow suit, but Russell is convinced it will resolve Markland’s issues with winter and Poa grasses for the foreseeable future.

“It has been like putting a puzzle together and every time you think you have it right a bully comes and wrecks it,” Russell says. “If we are going to spend money every year to fix this, we should do it once and spend it on bent grass. It is the only solution.”

Veteran golf journalist Robert Thompson is Senior Writer at SCOREGolf magazine, edits the PGA of Canada’s publications and is the golf analyst for Global News. 

FISHERS, Ind. – Team Canada’s Jennifer Ha continued her red hot play of late, winning medalist honours at the Mid-American Conference Championship on Sunday.

Ha kept her foot on the gas heading into Sunday’s final round, shooting a round-low 74 to sneak from behind to capture the win. The 20-year-old finished one stroke ahead of runner-up and Kent State teammate, Natalie Goodson.

Ha put herself in a great position to win after Saturday’s 3-under 69, highlighted by eight birdies. The Kent State junior is also fresh off of winning the Women’s Golfer of the Week for the Mid-American Conference just one week earlier. This was in large part due to her win at the Lady Buckeye Invitational that same week.

Other Canadians in the field included, Jenna Hague of Burlington, Ont. who finished in solo fifth at 11-over, while Kent State’s Josee Doyon of St-Georges-de-Beauce, Que. finished T6 after rounds of  73-79-77.

Collectively, the Kent State Golden Flashes dominated the competition with a 19-stroke victory. Ha, Goodson and Wad Phaewchimplee finished 1,2,3 respectively, with Doyon finishing tied for sixth and Erin Hawe finishing 18^th.

The Golden Flashes will look to ride their momentum into the NCAA Regionals from May 8-10.

Click here for the full leaderboard.

The golf season might be starting out slower than normal in some parts of the country, but active season for score posting will be underway coast-to-coast beginning May 1^st, 2014. Remember “active season” reflects the quality of the course conditions where you’re playing not where you live. For example if you played down south over the winter there’s a good possibility that course was “active” and you should post any rounds played.

Golfers playing in British Columbia and Alberta have been able to post scores since March 1^st, while active season for seven other provinces kicked off in mid-April. New Brunswick will officially open their season on May 1^st.

In addition to Canadian golfers posting their scores online at www.golfcanada.ca and at member club kiosks, Golf Canada members can also post their scores quickly and conveniently from their mobile devices on the Score Centre Mobile App.

The Score Centre Mobile App provides members with an option to post and track their scores on the go. It’s currently available on iOS and Android platforms and can be downloaded directly from Apple’s App Store or Android’s Google play. Golfers can also download the app by visiting www.golfcanada.ca/mobile on their mobile device.

This past winter hundreds of thousands of scores were posted online and each year over 7-million scores are posted by Golf Canada members through the Score Centre Mobile App and online.

In Canada, the active season in each province is as follows:

BC = Mar. 1 – Nov. 15
AB = Mar. 1 – Oct. 31
SK = Apr. 15 – Oct. 31
MB = Apr. 15 – Oct. 31
ON = Apr. 15 – Oct. 31
QC = Apr. 15 – Oct. 31
NS = Apr. 15 – Oct. 31
NB = May. 1 – Oct. 31
PE = Apr. 16 – Nov. 14
NL = Apr. 1 – Nov. 30

Not a Golf Canada member and would like to get an official Golf Canada Handicap Factor? Click here for info.

Delaney Howson of Newmarket, Ont. finished her senior campaign at Murray State University in style capturing the OVC Conference Championship by 14 strokes in Muscle Shoals, Ala.

Howson finished at 4-under 212 after firing rounds of 71-68-73 to set a new OVC scoring record. Her 4-under 68 in the second round was also the lowest score ever recorded at the OVC championship.

“I’m so happy right now, I don’t know what to say,” Howson said on camera following her round. “I wanted this so much for Coach and my team and to be here right now as champions, this is great!”

As a squad the Murray State Racers overcame six-shot deficit in the final round to capture their ninth Ohio Valley Conference Championship. Howson’s birdie putt on the par-3 18^th was critical for the Racers and gave them the outright lead by two shots to secure their automatic spot into the NCAA Regional Championships in May.

In addition to Howson’s seventh win as a Racer, the former Team Canada Development Squad member was also named the OVC player of the year. She became the only Murray State player in history to be named to the first team All-OVC four years in a row.

For complete scoring and results from the OVC Championship click here.

Golf Canada is deeply saddened by the passing of Ken Duggan, an important member of the Canadian golf community who passed away peacefully April 17, 2014 at the age of 78 after a brief fight with pulmonary fibrosis.

In addition to being a great family man – devoted husband, father and grandfather -Ken was an integral asset to Canadian golf.

Ken got his golf career started at Scarboro Golf Club in 1954 and later was an assistant professional of the London Hunt and Country Club for five years. He was head golf professional at Cedar Brae Golf Club (1961-1969) and Markland Wood Golf Course (1969-1993).

He is a past director of the PGA of Canada and was president in 1968, earning him a lifelong membership with the association. He was also director of the Golf Canada Foundation for five years.

His greatest love was as a teacher of the game, having coached countless golfers, including club members, collegiate student athletes and PGA Tour players.

Ken was selected by Golf Canada – then called the Royal Canadian Golf Association (RCGA) – to form the RCGA Player Development Program. In 1996 and 1997, he was head coach and director of Development Camps, and twice travelled to Japan with the junior teams.

As a player,  Duggan won 65 professional tournaments and played in the Canadian Open on 12 occasions.

After retirement, Ken continued to be active as a teacher of the game and took an interest in golf course design, including Loyalist Estates Golf Course and as part of the Markland Wood Long Range Planning Committee.

A reception to celebrate Ken’s life will be held Saturday April 26, between 1 and 4 pm at Markland Wood Golf Course (245 Markland Drive, Etobicoke).

Donations may be made in Ken’s memory to:

The Golf Canada Foundation
1333 Dorval Dr., Suite #1
Oakville, Ontario
L6M 4X7
1-800-263-0009
golfcanadafoundation.com

Tiger Woods is hosting another tournament, this one for recreational golfers on courses that include Merion and Congressional, and a gem north of Boston that a century ago was reputed to be the toughest U.S. Open course.

The Tiger Woods Foundation, which has seven learning centers and funds the Earl Woods Scholarship Program, has been raising money primarily through five events. There’s the Tiger Jam in Las Vegas (a charity concert and poker night) and the Tiger Woods Invitational (a private tournament for donors at Pebble Beach). The foundation also benefits from the Quicken Loans National and Deutsche Bank Championship on the PGA Tour, and his 18-man World Challenge in December.

The latest venture is called the Tiger Woods Charity Playoffs. It’s an amateur golf series that stretches over five months on eight golf courses, and it rewards the best players and fundraisers with a final event in Orlando, Fla., at the end of the year.

“My foundation provides really awesome experiences, and this event allows all golfers to play cool courses for charity,” Woods said in an email through his foundation.

Two-person teams can select a regional qualifying tournament with a registration fee ($500 per player on most courses), a $1,000 charity pledge and a goal of fundraising. The teams with the low net and gross score from each site, along with any team that raises $10,000 or more, qualify for the Charity Playoff Finals on Dec. 1-2. All money is in U.S funds.

Finalists gets two days of golf, two nights in the Four Seasons Resort at Walt Disney World Resort, a private exhibition with Woods and clubhouse credentials to the World Challenge. The team that raises the most money will get pro-am spots in the three PGA Tour-sanctioned events for 2015.

The first event is May 27 at Cascata in Las Vegas. Other courses are Congressional, Merion, Trump National in New Jersey, Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, Calif., Innisbrook in Florida and Myopia Hunt north of Boston.

Most of the courses are private, including Myopia Hunt outside Boston, which hosted the U.S. Open four times between 1898 and 1908 and produced three of the highest winning scores in U.S. Open history.

The series was officially announced three weeks ago, and 31 donors already have signed up for Merion, where the U.S. Open was played last year for the fifth time.

“We wanted to reach out to a new audience, amateur players, who can play these great courses and raise money for charities,” Foundation spokeswoman Emily Taylor said.

Players can sign up here.

Taylor said the foundation did not set a goal for how much money to raise. Proceeds are to benefit the Tiger Woods Learning Centers – the main one in Anaheim, Calif., one in Florida, two in Philadelphia and three in the Washington, D.C., area – and the Earl Woods Scholarship Program. Some of the money will be split among the foundation and charities designated by regional tournaments, particularly if they don’t have a learning center.

NOTE: In order to participate in the Tiger Woods Charity Playoffs you must have a valid Handicap Factor. Learn more about becoming a Golf Canada member and getting a Golf Canada Handicap Factor here.

ST ANDREWS, Scotland – Peter Dawson will retire next year as chief executive of The R&A after 16 years with the governing body in charge of the Rules of Golf and organizing the British Open.

The R&A says Tuesday that Dawson will step down in September 2015. He will also be also leaving his role as secretary of Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the 2,400-member club whose headquarters overlook the Old Course at St. Andrews.

In a statement, the R&A hailed the “continuing commercial success” of the British Open under Dawson since he joined the organization in 1999. He was also a key figure in securing golf’s return to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

The R&A says Dawson’s successor is expected to be made “in sufficient time to allow for an appropriate handover period in 2015.”

The recruitment of a successor will be handled by international executive search firm Spencer Stuart and the position will begin being advertised this weekend.

COLOMBUS, Ohio – Team Canada’s Jennifer Ha captured medalist honours at the Buckeye Invitational on Sunday with a one-stroke victory over Kelly Grassel of Michigan State.

Ha, a junior at Kent State, grabbed a share of the lead with Kent State teammate and fellow Canadian Josée Doyon of St-Georges-de-Beauce, Qué., following Friday’s opening round.

Ha maintained her advantage by shooting a 3-over 75 Saturday. On Sunday, the Calgary native slammed the door on the competition by firing a final round 71, her best score for the tournament. She finished with a 2-over par 218.

Doyon faltered down the stretch, falling to a tie for 10^th place after going 79-77 to close out the tournament.

Collectively, the Kent State Golden Flashes lost their second round lead to the Ohio State Buckeyes, who closed with final round of 291, the lowest score for any team through three days of competition. The Golden Flashes finished in a tie for second with Michigan State, eight strokes back of the host Buckeyes.

Kent State will look to build off this performance as they head into the Mid-American Conference Championship this upcoming Friday.

Click here for the full leaderboard.

DADE CITY, Fla. – Adam Svensson of Surrey, B.C. has led the NCAA Div. II No. 1 ranked Barry Buccaneers to the Sunshine State Conference Championship title on Tuesday, taking home medalist honours in the process.

Svensson, 20, opened with two rounds of 70, leaving him at 4-under par – one stroke ahead of the pack heading into Tuesday’s final round. The Barry University sophomore came out firing, shooting a 3-under 69 – his best round of the tournament. He finished at 7-under par, two strokes ahead of runner-up Joey Savoie of St. Leo University.

This marks the seventh win of the season for Svensson. He continues to make his case for this year’s Jack Nicklaus award, given to the top golfer in his division. Svensson is also climbing up the World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR), he currently sits at No. 34.

Collectively, the Buccaneers finished at 17-under par for a convincing 18-stroke win over runner-up Leo University. They will tee-it-up for their second-last tournament on May 5^th at the NCAA South Super Regional in Savannah, Ga.

For the full leaderboard, click here