Woodlawn Golf Club is getting ready to welcome golfers back this year as maintenance work continues on the course.
General Manager and Head Professional Amanda Minchin spoke Monday about where things are at for her and her staff.
"Gearing up like we always do. Getting the restaurant going...the golf shop's always open, we're always available. Driving range is open," Minchin said. "We're just waiting on Mother Nature, sounds like Mother Nature isn't done yet, she's coming back again. But that's okay, the moisture will be good."
Environment Canada is calling for as much as 20 centimetres of snow in the southeast later this week.
"If you come down here now and look out there, it's bone dry," Minchin said. "We kind of live in a desert, that's just how it is. Any kind of moisture is good. Obviously snow is more annoying...a good rain would be great. But moisture is always a good thing."
"The course looks good. We're just waiting for it to warm up and get some irrigation going."
Maintenance crews are currently out on the course doing some final preparations, Minchin said.
"We did a lot of tree trimming in the last couple weeks, they're cleaning that up, getting machinery going," she said.
The driving range just opened on Saturday.
"We typically try to get the driving range open as soon as we can, as soon as it's dry enough to get people out there, get some people down here," Minchin said. "You can hit balls...you're not going to really ruin anything out on the driving range. It gets people in and paying their dues and it's a chance to train our staff, it's hard to train our staff at the golf shop without customers."
She said the course could be open before the end of April, depending on the weather.
"The plan is to hopefully maybe pull tarps (from the greens and tee boxes) later this week or beginning of next week depending on what this storm does," Minchin said. "It's got to be a calm day to do that because those tarps are large pieces of material so it's not very much fun to do it in the wind. So a calm day, and get that going and get irrigation up and running and get cutting."
"If I had to guess, I would think some time late next week or the last weekend of April. Plan for that and if Mother Nature has other ideas, then we'll reassess."
Minchin said there won't be any changes to the course layout, but there is some drainage work being done to improve the course.
"Less glamourous things that maybe golfers won't notice, but you'll notice when we do get those big rains," she said.
The restaurant is now open with a new menu and new chef, and Minchin said the club will be offering a men's and ladies night again this year.
She said they have about 360 members heading into the new season.