Course Recovery
When storms hit hard, golf digs deep
With storms of the century seemingly happening every couple of years in recent times, golf has had to dig deep
It’s easy to lose track. The weather has been so intense over the past few years, so gosh-darn crazy, that it gets difficult to remember which storm tore things up where, and what year it all happened. The details, like the damages, pile up, and while some communities hit by more recent storms have bounced back quickly, others affected by long-ago catastrophes are still picking up the pieces. With a thought to the millions of lives impacted, and those lost, damage to golf courses is less profound, certainly. But it’s worth remembering that the effects of their destruction often go beyond Sunday foursomes. Many courses and clubs represent employment and income in their communities, and they can provide a kind of staging point for life to return to normal. Thus it has been of tremendous importance that after the wind and rain stopped and the sun returned, that clubs get up and running as quickly as possible. Here are just a few stories from many...
— Michael —
The third-most intense Atlantic hurricane (in terms of pressure) to hit the United States ever, the Category 4 Hurricane Michael walloped the Florida Panhandle on October 10 of last year. More than a year later, many were still picking up the pieces and the numbers were still being calculated: 72 deaths, 52 of those in the U.S., 15 in Central America; $53 billion in damages by some counts ($100 million in Central America); $6 billion worth of fighter jets at Tyndall Air Force Base destroyed; $3.87 billion in agricultural losses; and on and on and on. At one point the winds reached 155mph, and the destruction to personal lives and families and the communities likely will never be calculated. Among all of the damage, the worst of which occurred in the cities of Mexico Beach and Panama City, Florida, area golf courses were impacted severely, with some never to recover. Not long after the storm, in late October of 2018, Florida’s WJHG NBC 7 reported that, due to Michael, Hombre Golf Club in Panama City Beach would be closing. In need of some renovations, it had been for sale prior to the storm, but the course’s General Manager Robbie Willis said Michael had dealt the final blow. Two neighbors, Panama Country Club in Lynn Haven and Bay Point Golf Club, likewise lost hundreds of trees and sustained heavy damage as well, and are still dealing with the effects of the storm. Panama Country Club has posted videos of cleanup efforts as recently as this January, and aerial drone photography shows a torn-up landscape that nonetheless appears much improved from the devastated scene of fallen trees and blocked roads on a video posted in October. Bay Point, in contrast, has set a March 1 opening date for its Nicklaus Course, though its Meadows Course is still a long way from opening. As G.M. Ryan Mulvey told NBC7, “You know it all started after the hurricane, getting in and evaluating the damage. And getting some systems up and running. Getting our irrigation back and running on the Nicklaus Course so we could get water to the greens. And
really it’s a testament to our staff here at the club who have been working tirelessly since the storm. Getting the debris removed, getting the golf course back into shape… The golf course looks great, the greens are in fantastic shape. The fairways are great. Everything’s really ready to go, minus a few things we have to get done with our structures.”
Underlining the club’s importance to the area, Mulvey pointed out that the course was important not just to those who live and work at Bay Point, but to the area’s economy as well.
“Absolutely,” he told the station. “It’s a draw for tourism, for bed tax money, for putting people in condos and hotels… People come here specifically to play the Nicklaus Course, people come here on golf trips. They’ve been coming here for ten, twenty years.”
Another local club, Indian Springs, wasn’t so fortunate. Golf magazine interviewed the father-and-son owner team of Rod and Kyle Beebe in December and found two men working hard to recover their course, but acknowledging the reality that it might be over.
People come here specifically to play the course; it’s important for the community
“It was like a locomotive running right through your house,” local club champ Sammy Basford told writer Michael Bamberger in the article. He estimated that the storm took out 5,000 trees on the course, though Rod said it could be double that. According to the article, Kyle spends his days trying to clear the fairways, making little progress but keeping at it because it’s all he has.
“You soul-search when you’re by yourself,” he said. “One day I was on the loader, looking at all these downed trees, wondering if we’ll ever reopen, and I just threw up.”