TEEING OFF — Poplar Ridge making changes to its greens

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This article was published 09/05/2019 (2387 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Superintendent Tim Konsorada and his crew at Poplar Ridge Golf Course are hard at work to minimize frustrations for those who venture out onto the 18-hole track.

The crew is redoing the fifth, 10th and 15th greens this season, all of which had slopes that were difficult when green speeds grew faster.

“With any course, you’re going to design some things you’re going to look back on and say, ‘You know, I think we could have done something different there,” director of golf Lavern Popple said via telephone interview. “You could use the whole green, but when you got the greens to the speed you’d like to have them at, it made those parts very severe to play on.

“Golf’s a hard enough game as it is, you want to make it enjoyable for people. If better golfers can shoot lower scores, fantastic, but that’s a very small percentage of the golfing public.”

A quick Google Review search shows a wide variety of comments about the Onanole course, with a common theme even among those who liked the course being frustrated with the greens. Many are small, domed and have often been too firm for most.

Since the 10th leads back to the parking lot, the club allows golfers to play it, and it was one of the trickiest greens, which could make finishing with a three-putt more likely.

“The 10th hole was difficult, so that was a bad spot to walk off the course. It’s an improvement a lot of courses make over the course of time,” Popple said, adding the greens are improving across the board.

“The greens have really matured. Our greens are a little bit smaller in size, but now they hold very well. A lot of that credit goes to the original greenskeeper Ryan Myers, and now Tim Konsorada. Both those guys have done an unbelievable job with the course.”

It’s a new course, just 10 years old now, and the consensus among superintendents is it usually takes seven to eight years for greens mature.

Konsorada’s crew tore up half of No. 5, and completely rebuild then 10th and 15th, raising them up and taking some of the extreme break out of them. While they won’t be useable for a few months — Konsorada says August at the latest — the course will be better off in the future.

That’s not all that’s changed at Poplar Ridge. Konsorada is fixing the eighth tee box which sunk over time, and the opening hole is no longer the intimidating 607-yard beast it was a year ago.

“There’s no way players want to start with a 607-yard par 5. You need three really good shots, and it faces straight north, so if you’re playing into a prevailing north west wind, it makes it very difficult,” Popple said. “Even the white tees were about 545 yards, so we’ve moved all the tees up by an average of 75 yards, and it’s made the hole much more playable.”

A more enjoyable golf experience is probably good for business, considering Clear Lake Golf Course — the top-rated track in Manitoba on various travel sites — is just 12 minutes away.

Popple likes to think of Poplar Ridge as a stop on a bigger golf trip, and one that offers a different challenge than the others.

“We are a complement to (Clear Lake), and we’re working hard to make that a destination golf place, as opposed to just driving up to play one game,” he said. “They’re able to play Gilbert Plains, Neepawa, Dauphin, Minnedosa, Clear Lake and Poplar Ridge in the course of a week, hit six really good golf courses. We find a lot of people enjoy the fact that there’s a course completely different than Clear Lake, but still in really good condition and really playable.

“We’re a much more wide-open course. We have some elevation changes too, but more of a parkland course. There’s more of a vista, in terms of seeing the surrounding area.”

BIRDIES: Poplar Ridge is hosting the Riding Mountain Skins game along with Clear Lake again this year. Six Fridays throughout the summer, a maximum of 40 players — male or female — can play with up to $600 in cash prizes to be won each week. It’s $60 for non-members and $20 for members when playing their home course, which includes a power cart. Register online at golfpoplarridge.com or call Poplar Ridge (204-848-2382) or Clear Lake (204-848-4653) … Sandhills Golf and Country Club’s men’s open is Sunday, June 9 and the ladies’ open is Sunday, June 16. Both are 10 a.m., shotgun starts and cost $40. … Assiniboine Community College’s Cougars Classic tournament is June 20 at Shilo Country Club. Early-bird registration is $100 per player or $400 per foursome, and runs until May 31. Contact alumni@assiniboine.net to register.

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