VALDOSTA — Kinderlou Forest Golf Course is once again ready for the Nationwide Tour’s finest golfers.

Golf Course Superintendent Steve Singley and his crew have been working to prepare the fairways, greens, roughs and tee boxes for four months in anticipation of the South Georgia Classic held April 28-May 4. The tournament brings the Nationwide Tour’s top golfers chasing a purse of $625,000 with a winner’s share of $112,500.

“The golf course is ready to be played right now as far as I’m concerned,” Singley said.

Last year’s inaugural tournament received good reviews from the professional golfers and tour officials, allowing Singley to build on the success.

The greens, which were above the tour’s average speeds are being maintained the same way, but the rest of the course has been lowered, and the rough has been increased.

With Kinderlou being touted as the longest course on the PGA Tour, it was shortened by green speeds that were up to 13 on the Stimp scale, used to measure how far the ball rolls.

Kinderlou’s greens normally are set at a nine on the scale, but for the South Georgia Classic the speed is increased significantly.

“Last year players were very complimentary, and very pleased about the greens’ speed,” Singley said.

Singley has gone back to quickening the greens, and starting Wednesday will mow them once in the morning, once in the afternoon and then roll them and adding plenty of water to firm them up.

While the green speed helped with the long course, PGA officials noted that there wasn’t as much rough as they would have preferred, which was negated by the course length.

However, this year there is longer and wider rough thanks to a diligent fertility program put in place by Singley.

Starting before the winter the Kinderlou crew put iron down on the course, to help with color and growth, and four weeks ago started adding ammonium sulfate and plenty of water.

Singley was thrown off by the recent cold snap, but has his crew right back to adding fertility to the rough.

“We were a little concerned about these last few cool nights,” Singley said. “We had a little frost, which you are always concerned when you’re trying to push the grass to get it to grow.”

However once the warm weather came back into the forecast the grounds crew started pushing more fertility adding the ammonium sulfate, working on the bunkers and restricting cart access.