The Fergus Falls, Minn., golf course has installed a temporary green, shortened some holes, and restricted golf cart use due to the wet weather.
The recent heavy rains in Fergus Falls, Minn., which have caused many issues across the state, have also created havoc at Pebble Lake Golf Club, the Fergus Falls (Minn.) Journal reported.
“It’s happened before, but me personally, I’ve never actually seen it get this bad,” said Keaton Lausch, who works at the pro shop and has played the course for the past 12 to 13 years. “The whole entire course is just pretty soggy and wet. Like every other course in the area.”
The course required some improvising lately, since a pond in between the fairways of holes five and six flooded with all the rain this month. The pond spread across the holes and onto the green of hole No. 5. They put up a temporary green for hole five, since most of the regular green is under water, and turned it from a par five into a par four. Hole six turned into a par three when it’s normally a par four, the Journal reported.
“We just shortened up some holes to kind of compensate for some of the flooding,” Lausch said.
They also put out sand bags around the now-larger pond to try and keep the flooding at bay as best as possible, the Journal reported.
With the soggy days lately, business has been down at the course, especially since they haven’t allowed golf carts. People can golf as long as there is no lightning nearby. That limits the amount of players if they don’t want to walk the course, according to Lausch. Friday, they allowed carts just in the rough part of the course, the Journal reported.
Getting the course conditions back to normal is all dependent on the weather, the Journal reported.
“We’re obviously going to open it as soon as we possibly can,” Lausch said.
Ten Mile Lake Resort in Dalton, Minn., has been in Mike Schultz’s family for more than a century, and he can’t remember the water ever being as high as it is now, the Journal reported.
“This is probably the worst year ever for water,” he said. “It’s just unbelievable how much rain we’ve had.”
Schultz said the water is above the high water mark on the bridge between North and South Ten Mile Lake, and he can’t get his smallest boat through, the Journal reported.
This week he raised all his docks as high as they would go, and took 20- and 30-foot sections off because they were underwater. After a recent storm, they had to retrieve four docked boats that floated away, the Journal reported.
Still, Schultz said, it hasn’t affected the number of resorters. “They still get out on the lake,” he said. “People are just putting up with it. It is what it is, you just have to deal with it.”
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