Heavy rain causes turbulent 2024 tournament season
It was wet. Too wet. So wet that the effects of heavy rainfall are now also making themselves felt in the tournament calendar of German golf associations. Heidrun Klump, Managing Director of the Bavarian Golf Association, experienced 2024 as extremely unpredictable in terms of weather. Three Bavarian individual championships had to be canceled at the beginning of June due to unplayable courses at the venues GC Augsburg, Golfpark Gut Häusern and GC Höslwang. This was a first in a negative sense, as Bavarian venues had never experienced such extreme rainfall in such a short space of time before. From May to September 2024, Bavaria recorded exceptionally high levels of precipitation. In May, the rainfall was around 163 liters per square meter, which was over 70% above the long-term average for this month. The average values were also exceeded in the summer months:
- June: 142 liters (60 % above average)
- July: 150 liters (around 50 % above average)
- August: 138 liters (about 45% above average)
- September: 155 liters (a good 60 % above the average).
According to the German Weather Service, these deviations were caused by increased areas of low pressure and intensified by the warmer, more humid air due to climate change. The low-pressure areas held more water and then also caused heavier rain.
A golf association can hardly prepare for these heavy downpours. “Even with good weather forecasts, it’s difficult to estimate whether the rain will actually come and how heavy it will be regionally,” says Klump.
Additional expenses and financial losses
The extreme weather had organizational and financial consequences. The search for make-up dates for the individual championships was not easy, and the number of participants was ultimately significantly lower. The Bavarian men’s and women’s individual championships could not be rescheduled. Here, the registration fees were lost as income. The organizational effort involved in reversing the fees, informing the players, rescheduling referees and communicating with the clubs was enormous, Klump notes. The scenario was then repeated again in September anyway with the youth league final and the final of the AK65 league at the GC München-Riedhof course. At the venues themselves, the consequences of the rainy season were drawn – at least in part. At GC Augsburg, which was particularly badly affected by waterlogged dykes in neighboring ponds, club manager Yannick Ludwicki notes that “we actually had water issues the whole year.” To prevent this in the coming years, “we have already laid a lot of drainage in the last 14 days, closed two bunkers and flattened two steep slopes.” To a certain extent, this has also removed a few contaminated sites: Roots had already worked their way into drainage channels and were now cut back. According to Ludwicki, the issue is not yet closed. “In fact, we now have an investment list that revolves around the topic of drainage.”
The summary from GC München-Riedhof is similar. “The Ak 65 final didn’t work at all; the course was completely underwater, but in general, you can say that we had problems throughout the year in carrying out our greenkeeping program as planned,” concludes Managing Director Kariem Baraka. “Large-scale fairway mowing, for example, often doesn’t work with the wet surfaces.” The Final Four of the German Golf League also had to contend with water in the bunkers and a limited mowing program because the rainfall was too high at night. As in Augsburg, GC München-Riedhof is also using the fall and winter to eliminate the weak points. New drainage pipes are being laid in some areas to eliminate the critical points.
Fewer green fee guests and cart rental
In the end, it’s not just a cancelled tournament that is a problem for the clubs, but the loss of revenue in general. There were fewer green fee guests, for example, Ludwicki notes. In addition, the golf courses are closed to electric carts, which cause too much damage to the grass surface. Revenue is also lost here. The wetness also blocks the older players in the golf clubs. If electric carts can no longer be used because the fairways are too wet, golfers who can no longer play a round of golf on foot will have to give up golf completely. This is an unpleasant side effect of the extreme rainfall that hardly anyone thinks about at first.
