The decision by Arnold Palmer Golf Management makes Moorland the twelfth course in the Myrtle Beach, S.C. “Grand Strand” region to close this year to repair winterkill damage. The course will reopen in September with new Champion ultradwarf Bermuda grass greens, which is on the Legends Resorts’ Heathland Course and helped that course make it through the winter in better condition.

Arnold Palmer Golf Management has halted play at the Moorland Course at Legends Resort, the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News reported, making it the latest course in the “Grand Strand” region to close at least nine holes this season to repair winterkill damage caused by harsh weather earlier in the year.

C&RB reported on the crisis affecting courses in the region earlier In June (http://clubandresortbusiness.com/2018/06/winterkill-crisis-plagues-myrtle-beach-clubs/).

The Moorland course, a P.B. Dye design that opened in 1990, closed on June 25 and, according to the Sun News, will likely remain closed unto the end of August, when it will reopen with new Champion ultradwarf Bermuda grass greens.

The Moorland course had TifEagle Bermuda greens, but Champion is on the Legends Resorts’ Heathland Course, which made it through the winter in better condition, the Sun News reported.

“Instead of putting a band-aid on the course and sodding areas of the six or seven greens that needed it, we kind of bit the bullet,” Bradley Vaughan, Sales and Marketing Manager for Arnold Palmer Golf Management’s five Grand Strand courses, told the Sun News. “We were probably going to have to redo the greens in the next five or six years, so we decided to go ahead and knock it out of the park.”

The decision has forced the company to move an estimated 4,400 scheduled rounds on Moorland to its four other Grand Strand courses, including Oyster Bay Golf Links, Heritage Club and Legends’ Heathland and Parkland courses, Vaughn noted.

The Heathland and Parkland courses are now going to play host to the PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com World Amateur Handicap Championship rounds that had been set to tee off at Moorland, the Sun News reported.

Vaughn said that Arnold Palmer Golf Management is also considering obtaining green covers for its courses, as another possible measure to help prevent a recurrence of the damage incurred from the past winter.