While the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie and Quail Valley Golf Club in Vero Beach didn’t sustain damage from the hurricane that devastated the Bahamas, maintenance crews diligently prepared their courses for the worst. Part of a 20-page hurricane-preparation handbook at Quail Valley includes spraying the tees, fairways and areas around the greens with a growth regulator, to help combat saturation from the expected heavy rains.

Golf course operators and superintendents deal with Mother Nature every day. They know how to handle droughts and persistent rains, heat waves and cold fronts, the TCPalm.com reported. Hurricanes are another matter.

Superintendents have a difficult job maintaining a pristine golf course in perfect weather conditions, the TCPalm.com reported. Then throw in the threat of 185 mph winds and 20-plus inches of rain that Hurricane Dorian brought last week.

“When you’re a control freak, like most of us are, and you get something like that, it’s just so far out of your control,” said Dick Gray, Director of Agronomy at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie.

Gray, who oversees the three championship golf courses at PGA Golf Club, told TCPalm.com he knew things were looking bleak when he saw Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel at a Stuart restaurant as Dorian was approaching the U.S.

Fortunately for the Treasure Coast, Dorian stayed just off the coast last week to spare the area of the devastation it inflicted on the Bahamas and parts of the Carolinas, the TCPalm.com reported. There were no reports of area golf courses sustaining major damage, according to South Florida PGA officials.

“All we lost was four days of work,” Gray said. “We got away with one.”

Let’s be clear: When a potential natural disaster approaches, few people are thinking about golf, the TCPalm.com reported. Except those people who run the courses, and it’s all they can think about.

They have the same concerns as everyone else in a hurricane: hoping they maintain power (or have backup generators), making sure they have enough gas, barricading the clubhouse, clearing the drains and taking all of the signs, tee markers and pins so they don’t become projectiles, the TCPalm.com reported.

Quail Valley Golf Club in Vero Beach, Fla. even has a 20-page hurricane-preparation handbook to help the course, its River Club and its social club (Quail Valley at The Pointe) deal with Mother Nature’s potential wrath, the TCPalm.com reported.

Part of the elaborate plan for the course included spraying the tees, fairways and area around the greens with a growth regulator to help combat saturation from the expected heavy rains, the TCPalm.com reported, as well as applying prevent fungicides on all 18 greens to prevent losing the grass afterward.

“It buys you time,” Dustin Naumann, Quail Valley’s director of agronomy, said of the growth regulators. “Sometimes, once the storm hits, you can’t get on the course for a few days without causing major damage.”

Before the storm, Naumann was worried Quail Valley might lose its eighth green adjacent to a lake, as well as several bridges on the course, the TCPalm.com reported. He also was concerned about losing power because, as strange as it seems, golf courses still need water after a hurricane.

“Typically, once the storm leaves, it sucks most of the water out of the air,” Naumann said. “You need the irrigation system to work or you could lose your greens.”

Because they’re all in the same boat, Treasure Coast superintendents share tips with each other to deal with Mother Nature, the TCPalm.com reported.

“One of the best things about our business is the camaraderie among other turf specialists,” Naumann told TCPalm.com.

Golf courses may not be at the forefront for many during a storm, but the industry has an economic impact of more than $8 billion in Florida, the TCPalm.com reported. The Treasure Coast’s abundance of high-end private clubs, homes to stars such as Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and Rory McIlroy, plays a key role in the local economy.

They were happy to just lose several days of work, which is obviously much better than losing lives and homes, the TCPalm.com reported.

“We obviously got very fortunate,” said Don Meadows, Quail Valley’s director of golf. “We’ve gotten worse damage from afternoon storms.”