Made-for-television golf dominated the desert from the 1980s to the 2000s
The Battle at Bighorn was one of several popular made-for-television events played in the Coachella Valley from the 1980s to the 2000s
It is the most inconvenient of times for golfers in the desert.
October brings with it postseason baseball, Halloween decorations and overseeding of desert golf courses. That means courses are shut down for three weeks or more in order to make the transition from summertime Bermuda grass to wintertime, cool-weather grasses like ryegrass.
While that insures beautiful green golf courses for November and through to the spring, it leaves golfers out in the cold for much of October. Plenty of smart people, including people at the turfgrass management program at UC Riverside, are making great strides in developing a grass that will tolerate the extreme temperatures of a 120-degree desert summer and an icy desert winter evening. But until such a grass is ready for commercial use, desert golfers must suffer through overseeding.
How do you survive a golf-less October. Here’s a few suggestions:
Search hard for a place to play
Okay, not every golf course is closed at the same time in the desert in October. If you search hard you might find one or two courses open, smaller courses you have never played or courses that overseeded early in order to be open when other courses are closed. If you are lucky enough to be a member at a private course, you might have two courses at your facility, and chances are one was overseeded before the other. It’s a gamble, but there might be some golf for you in the desert. Otherwise, you can get in your car and drive an hour to a non-overseed courses in the Inland Empire. Again, this might work out if you find a course you have never played before.
Hit the range
Yes, golf courses are closed, but that’s not always true of a course’s driving range. You might have to search a bit for a range that is open, but taking an hour or so to go hit a large bucket of balls will get you out of the house and into the fresh air while satisfying your need to hit some golf balls. Heck, you might even improve your game a bit, since most people only hit range balls just before playing a round.
Take a little time off
Okay, so for a month, you can’t play. That’s not the worst thing in the world. Sure, plenty of golfers love the idea of playing the game 365 times a year. But taking a break from the game might recharge your batteries for when the golf courses are open again. Sometimes you don’t appreciate what you have until you don’t have it, and a month away from golf might make you miss the game more.
Check out new equipment
If you aren’t playing, you might take some time to consider the golf clubs you are playing and if it might be time for an upgrade or a refreshing of your equipment. The desert has plenty of fine golf stores where you can go down, look at the new clubs available and hit some shots into a net or even onto a simulator to show how your game might improve with today’s latest club technology. Yes, it might cost you a few hundred dollars, but think about the money you are saving by not playing golf this month.
So there is overseeding and very little golf in the Coachella Valley in October. That doesn’t mean a golfer has to just sit and home and watch golf on television. Actually, that is an option, but there are better options that will quench your thirst for hitting a golf ball.
Larry Bohannan is the golf writer for The Desert Sun. You can contact him at (760) 778-4633 or at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com. Follow him on Facebook or on X at @larry_bohannan.
