Play is up on Ritzville's golf course

RITZVILLE – The municipal golf course is back to regular hours of 8 a.m. to an hour before dusk seven days a week, with three new greens established and ready to golf on.

"It will take a little more time to cut them down to normal height, but they are established," Golf Course Manager Dan Duff said of greens number two, six and nine. The greens died last summer due to a lack of water when city well no. 9 was offline.

Duff said the Ritzville Golf Association Men's Club has donated $6,500 for tree trimmings.

"We've developed a good relationship between them and the city, and they are putting a lot of their money back into the course, which has been great," Duff said, adding additional beautification funds have been made available to the golf course to clean up the rock area off Division Street. Duff said landscaping would include rerouting the rocks with a different border, and adding some bark as ground cover. They will also be moving the statue of Dorothy Danekas onto a mount.

"Play is up, and things are feeling normal again," Duff said.

The golf course attracts not just locals, but golfers from out of county and out of state.

"People come from Tri-Cities and all over," Diane Kennedy, manager of the Caddy Shack restaurant on the golf course grounds said. "They love this golf course because Dan Duff takes such good care of it."

Ron Eldred of Star Ranch, Wyoming, said he discovered the golf course while driving through on his way to visit his son in Cle Elum.

"I GPS'd golf courses in the area, and found this. I didn't know Ritzville had a golf course. You can't see it from the highway," Eldred said. "I would recommend anyone driving through to stop for a couple of hours and play. The greens are pretty, and well taken care of."