BUFFALO, N.Y. — Any sign of spring and you're guaranteed to find golfers out at the Cazenovia Park Golf Club or any of Buffalo's public courses.
All it takes is one day of good weather and folks like Leo Camilloni and Jon Adamski will be there.
"I know a lot of people like to get out here as early as they can," Camilloni said.
For the first year ever, the Olmsted Park Conservancy took the idea of early access and ran with it.
They opened the Cazenovia golf course for unlimited golf on Wednesday for the hole-in-one price of $10. They had done the same back in February on another warm winter day, but the March conditions proved superior.
"I'm here with my brother. He's supposed to be working but we got him out here golfing and that's always better than work," Adamski said.
It took some work to get the course ready said Chris Carroll, the director of golf operations. After several winter storms, there were plenty of downed tree limbs and debris on the course but the work has proven to be worth it.
"There are over 50 people on the golf course right now and I've seen many people with shorts on so they're chomping at the bit," Carroll said.
The ground is still too wet for mowing and a few other things have to be cleaned up he said. The goal is to mow next week for the first time but will depend on mother nature.
"Our crews are ready, our equipment is ready to go. It just depends on what she does," Carroll said.
The Park Conservancy plans to expand the one-day program to the Delaware Park golf course at some point soon and host additional days. No future dates have been announced and they will be weather dependent. Unfortunately, the South Park golf course is excluded from these future plans for now because it's "still underwater."
"This is kind of like preseason golf so don't do any damage to the golf course that could hurt it long term," Carroll said.
Speaking of the long term, Cazenovia will be getting bunkers in the future according to Carrol and the Delaware Park golf course is in line to have more heather, a tall grass, planted this season.
Whatever the improvements are getting out on the course will always be fun.
"Normally they don't even put the flag sticks in until the first day they open so it's nice to do something like this it gets everybody out," Camilloni said.
The Golf Operations Staff told 2 On Your Side it hopes to open for the season sometime in mid to late April.