A couple of things I would recommend to make pool maintenance easier.
1. Buy good chemicals from a pool store. Don't buy Walmart's chemicals.
2. Get a good filter.
3. Get an automatic pool vac. Saves a ton of time.
When I first got my pool, every summer I had a week or so when the pool looked like a pond. When that happened I had to shock it and dump a bunch of algicide. Then scrub and vacuum. I had to add clarifier to make the algae clump together in large enough particles that my sand filter would catch it. Otherwise, it just flowed back into the pool. This took one-two weeks to clear up. Around here the summer swimming season is way too short to have the pool unusable for a couple of weeks. So, I purchased a 100 sq. ft Sta-Rite cartridge filter and good chemicals. I have not had that problem once since I started doing that. And that has been well over 10 years ago. Sure, we get some occasional algae, but we hit it with a little algicide, scrub and vacuum. Easy peasy.
We always have the water analyzed by the local pool shop when we first open it up every year. Once all is good, we just use test strips for chlorine and pH the rest of the season.
Bottom line...good chemicals and good equipment and pool maintenance is a breeze.
Oh, yeah and one other thing for making the pool opening easier. Open it a month before you plan to use it. If you go back a month, I open mine the first weekend in May, the water is usually to cold to allow much algae growth prior to opening. When I use to open mine the week before Memorial Day I usually had to battle scrubbing algae from the walls of the pool. This didn't cause the previous pond like conditions, it just required more scrubbing when opening.
I hope this helps. Good luck.