This year gets better and better. We start with an extremely dry April and early May followed by an extremely wet late May and June. This pattern has continued going into July with consistently high humidity resulting in violent storms that have rocked the golf course in a variety of ways. Some of these storms have dropped excessive amounts of rain on the golf course in a very short amount of time, resulting in washouts on bunkers and in some cases creating springs underground that cause persistent wet areas that take weeks to go away-if the rain stops. Some storms bring the added benefit of lightning which has, on two separate occasions, caused damage to irrigation satellites and computer components. These two items take labor and money to repair but are things that we are accustomed to dealing with and really not a huge deal. The latest gift, however, is not something that happens every year.
Ninety mile per hour winds hammered on the golf course right around 2 A.M. on Thursday morning. This wind destroyed sixty-seven trees on the golf course (this number does not include other trees lost on the property that are not in play). The debris on the golf course was widespread and the fallen trees made navigation on the golf course impossible without extensive chainsaw work. We were able to open the golf course an hour later than usual-the course was playable but admittedly not in its best condition. Recovering from this sort of damage takes time and careful prioritizing in regards to what needs to be done right away and what can wait. The first order of business is to make cart paths passable and putting greens playable. This took all day on Thursday. The second priority after this is to clean off tees and fairways so that we may continue to mow them. This was done on Friday. What is often forgotten when getting hit with a storm like this is that we cannot just drop everything we are doing and take a few weeks focusing solely on cleanup. The routine golf course work does not go away while we are handling this challenge. In effect, it is a balance between cleanup and maintaining optimal playability that must be achieved. With this in mind, please be patient as we continue to systematically get to cleanup work on all areas of the golf course.
Multiply this mess by about 20 or so and you get the idea of what it is that we are dealing with.
See you on the golf course.
Vincent Dodge