Fall 2026 at Swope Memorial

As you are likely aware, Swope Memorial has moved to Cart Path Only for the remainder of the season. I want to take a moment to explain our reasoning behind this decision and outline the positive impact it will have on our course conditions moving forward.

To provide a bit of background, our seeding process began in late fall 2025. While much of the seed took hold, areas seeded later struggled and required reseeding this past spring. Spring seeding always presents a challenge, and despite our efforts, heavy rains, fluctuating temperatures, high-clay soils, and weed pressure kept the rough from establishing to the standard we expected for opening day.

As you’ve likely noticed, certain areas along paths and in the rough remained thin, requiring another round of seeding this fall. We recently drilled in an additional 4,000 lbs of fescue, and we are very pleased with the results so far. Ideal fall weather has allowed much of the seed to germinate and begin to fill in nicely.

However, because our youngest and most fragile turf is concentrated along path edges and between cart paths and fairways—where traffic is heaviest—we made the proactive decision to move to Cart Path Only a bit earlier this season.

This decision delivers two major long-term benefits:

• Young Fescue Protection: It gives our new cool-season turf the best possible chance to establish strong root systems and survive the upcoming winter.

• Zoysia Health: Removing cart traffic from fairways during their fall transition allows the zoysia to enter dormancy stress-free, ensuring it bounces back healthier and faster in the spring.

Our priority at Swope Memorial is always to deliver outstanding playing conditions and a great overall experience. Heading into winter, plant health across our greens, tees, fairways, and rough is paramount so we can hit the ground running next spring with the quality product you expect and deserve.

I truly appreciate your understanding and support. I firmly believe this
adjustment will pay major dividends for the condition of our course next season and beyond.

Seed, Seed, More SEED

 

With these great spring temperatures and rain, we've had good success with our seeding to bridge the gap between what was done last fall and where we need to be for opening the course to play.  

Unfortunately, much of the seed that was planted late in the fall and dormant seeded in the winter was either washed away by the heavy rains or frozen off shortly after germination with the incredibly low temps we got a couple months ago. 

In response to this, we have seeded over 4000 lbs of tall fescue in the rough, one 4-foot pass at a time. We also have been using our hydro-mulch unit to cover seed on steep slopes and tough to establish areas. Though the weeds are also taking advantage of the rain and temperatures, we are confident we can have things cleaned up in time for golf. Spring seeding is an adventure.

I want to take a moment to shout out our small, but incredible crew here at Swope. It is clear that everyone has a clear goal in mind and is working their tails off to make it happen. I know it has been a lot to ask of these guys, but every one of them has absolutely risen to the occasion. 

Antonio, Julio, Alex, Carlos, Ulises, Bill, Sam, and MJ-- Hats off to you!

Behind the Scenes this Winter

 If you've ever had the pleasure of purchasing golf course fixtures, you will know that the cost can get unreasonable very quickly. With a finite budget for the renovation at Swope, we wanted to put every dollar possible into making the course incredible. To offset some cost of the fixtures and furnishings, we have taken on the project of building as many as we can in-house.

We started with a stack of plastic wood composite to match furnishings we've purchased

The stack is processed into individual components 

Here is a sneak peak at the tee markers 

Small trash cans for every hole

Overall, we still have work to do on everything we want to make for the course as well as growing in the course and getting it ready for play this summer. My hope is that everyone is even half as excited as we are here to roll out this reconstructed piece of history!

 

Ready to welcome back GOLF

Though we don't have a solid timeline of the official reopening of Swope Memorial, we do know that it will be very exciting when it happens. As of now, we are shooting for early July and if weather continues to be favorable, this seems to be an attainable goal. 

If you have not had the chance, I encourage you to visit the Swope Memorial Youtube page to see videos of all the construction that has taken place on the course. 

 https://www.youtube.com/@swopememorialgc9587

With the heavy equipment gone, the detail work has been the focus of our crew here at the course. The amount we would like to do before the opening seems daunting, but our number one motivation here is to provide the best possible product we can for our golfers when those gates swing open.

We look forward to seeing you this summer!

Wet, Wet, Dry, Wet

I hope you all are enjoying May as much as we are at Swope Memorial. While you wait for our reopening we do encourage you to support our other Kansas City facilities including Shoal Creek, Hodge Park, Minor Park, Heart of America, Adams Pointe, Winterstone, and Sycamore Ridge. As the title of this blog suggests May has been a very wet month for us here at Swope. We start and end this month with lower than average temperatures as well as ample rainfall. This has been a blessing to us as we currently have our irrigation system down for the renovation. This has also allowed us to continue our sodding of new fairways edges discussed in our previous blog.

Widening of old #7 new #3 Fairway

Transporting Sod from #12 to new #3

New Sod on #3

While the majority of the month has been wet we did experience a dry spell towards the middle of the month that tested our ability to keep our new sod hydrated without active irrigation. Our staff came up with several ingenious ways to water this sod, including converting our spray rig typically used for chemical applications into a watering unit. We were also able to convert an old 1250 gallon water tank typically used by the city for snow melt applications into a hydraulic pump supplied watering rig.

Converted Spray Rig at direct filling station from Fire Hydrant