Greenbrier revival lauded
After lending hand after storm, Watson touts W.Va. resilience
The morning after a devastating storm left much of southern West Virginia in ruin last summer, Bubba Watson wound up in a meeting room at the historic Greenbrier resort sitting at a table with Jim Justice, now the state’s governor and owner of the resort, military heads, community members and police chiefs from the surrounding area.
“I told them I’ve got money. What do we need to do?” Watson said.
What Watson and thousands of others from the area and beyond did was go to work rebuilding, restoring and replacing what was washed away by the might of Mother Nature. With a state of emergency declared for 44 counties, there was a lot of work to be done after the worst flooding in the state’s history.
Among the destruction was the Old White TPC at Greenbrier, home to the Greenbrier Classic in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and one of five courses severely damaged at the resort. The extent of the damage was so thorough that the PGA Tour event was canceled last year.
Watson was at his home at the resort — it rests some 500 feet above the Snead Course — when torrential rain hit the area. In short order, power was lost, the courses were flooded and homes were floating down a river.
“The quick destruction … it was overwhelming what happened,” Watson said.
So, too, was the restoration of the region. Less than a year after the storm, the area is thriving and the PGA Tour is back.
Phil Mickelson is back, too. The winner of 42 Tour titles and five majors recently purchased a home at the resort and will play in the event for the first time since 2013.
“A lot of people on the PGA Tour feel the emotional tie to the Greenbrier resort, and they were just as devastated to see all of the destruction that came here,” Mickelson said at the media day two weeks ago. “The Greenbrier is right at the heart of the rebuilding effort. It was important to get it back up and running, saving people’s jobs.”
While Watson’s job isn’t going very well — he hasn’t won in nearly 17 months and has only two top-10 finishes in 13 worldwide starts this year — he can’t wait to hit his first shot of the tournament. It will be a lasting reminder of the area’s revival and all the work that went into it.
“Donations from all over the world poured in after the storm. And the people in the area didn’t sit back and complain. They fought. They cried for a second and then they worked. That was the beauty of the West Virginia people,” Watson said. “To see them nearly a year later, what an effort, what a beautiful city, what a comeback. ... This week is a celebration.”
Watson and his wife, Angie, were not stranded after the storm and definitely were not without purpose. With a muscled-up truck and a jacked-up Jeep, they traveled through the mud and rubble to take supplies to multiple shelters and homes.
When Watson left to play a tournament the week after, Angie remained and kept driving and helping.
“What spearheaded it was just the people of West Virginia themselves,” Angie Watson said. “They impacted us, impacted our family. People keep praising us for how much we did. We wish we could have done more.”
They did plenty.