So with today being quite nice, and Monday and Tuesday of this week expected to be nice as well, it’s not unreasonable to ponder sneaking out of work early to go play golf (I mean, the clocks go forward Saturday night- it’s like they’re doing this on purpose or something).

And yet, here in Howard County, you’d think that our courses would want to let folks know what’s going on.  You would think that.

My goal was to send out a blog on what courses are and aren’t open, and hopefully see signs of excitement after this really cold and snowy winter we’ve had.  Well, it didn’t quite turn out that way.

Timbers at Troy and Waverly Woods “should” be open.  I say should, because their attempt at communication is poor at best.  Timbers at Troy has a Twitter account, which is nice (except that it hasn’t been updated in 2 years).  Waverly Woods is worse- no tweets since 2011!  Their websites have nothing on them that say “we’re open” or “we’re opening on ‘X’ date.”  So they might be.  Maybe.  Or not.  Unless they are.

Waverly Woods does, however, have a Tumblr page from their Superintendent that was updated on 2/24/14 but makes no proclamation of “hey everyone we’re open!”

Timbers at Troy?  No clue.  Their website has great photography, but nothing about being open (it does have a calendar with all of their outings and league dates).

I hate to keep hitting them with this stick, but compare that to Montgomery County Golf.  They sent out tweets TODAY for every course (most of them along the lines of “open and cart path only” or “open and walking only”), and not only that, but they have a PUBLISHED aeration schedule!  You can see when they’re going to aerate what courses.

Columbia Association?  Nothing about golf in the last month.

Turf Valley?  Nothing about golf this year.

At January’s PGA Merchandise Show, there was no amount of bleating about trying to grow the game.  It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, and it takes several hours to play an 18-hole round.  One good thing to do is to reach young people, and that would be via social media (seriously- it takes about 30 seconds to send out a tweet).  Updating your website might be good, but I can understand that this can take time.  Twitter is easy.  Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram are also easy.  This is where young people (and Gen-X’ers like myself) go for info.  Yes, your website is important, but sending out a Tweet is cheap, easy, and is a great way to reach people.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go ask my magic 8-ball if our local courses are open.