Activity had still not returned to normal several weeks after straight-line winds and tornadoes ripped through club properties in Nebraska’s Sarby County. In Pasadena, Calif., the staff of Brookside GC needed to revive turf on several holes that it leased for the first-ever Arroyo Seco Weekend, a two-day musical festival featuring performances by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and Mumford & Sons.
Several weeks after straight-line winds and a tornado ripped through two golf course properties in Sarby County, Neb., cleanup challenges continue to affect their ability to return to normal business activity, the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald reported.
Platteview Golf Club in Bellevue, Neb. and Willow Lakes Golf Course, a military course at Offutt Air Force Base, have both been closed since June 16, when straight-line winds blew through Platteview and a tornado ripped through the middle of Willow Lakes, the World-Herald reported.
No one was hurt at either property, thanks to swift action by course personnel, the World-Herald reported.
Platteview GC planned to reopen its front nine on July 7 while cleanup work continued on the back nine, the World-Herald reported. The full course was expected to be reopened by mid-July.
Willow Lakes GC still remained closed indefinitely, however, after the EF1 tornado hit the property at about 8 p.m. on June 16, the World-Herald reported.
Course pro Steve Ritz-Woller told the World-Herald that Willow Lakes was ground zero for the tornado, and that the storm would leave a permanent impact.
“The path it took was right down the middle of the course,” Ritz-Woller said. “The course will play different now.”
The hardest-hit holes, where strategic trees are now gone, are Nos. 2, 6, 7, 8 and 14 on the northern end of the state’s only course designed by Robert Trent Jones, the World-Herald reported.
The trees that have been downed or damaged, Ritz-Woller said, are in the hundreds.
“We’ve been putting forth a monumental cleanup effort,” he said. “The big thing now is arranging for a tree contractor for some of the big stuff my maintenance crew can’t do. As soon as we get a contractor on board, we’ll develop a timeline after we see what we can get done in a day.”
Gary Austin, a rules official for the Nebraska Golf Association, helped last weekend with the cleanup, the World-Herald reported. Austin said there were tree limbs driven into the ground.
The night of the tornado, golfers were on the course and would have been until dusk, the World-Herald reported. Ritz-Woller said he wasn’t there, but he was watching the weather on television and was most concerned about lightning.
Staff began clearing the course around 7 p.m. and everyone, including staff, was off the property by 7:30.
At Platteview GC, General Manager Leah Dickerson told the World-Herald that about 30 people were in the clubhouse after the first day of course’s member-guest tournament when the winds hit. Many more left as the storm approached, Dickerson said.
In a separate report by television station KETV ABC 7 of Omaha, Dickerson said the damage from the wind included 100 downed trees and close to 300 damaged in total. “So [it was] quite a big task to take on,” she said.
KETV reported that Bay Hills Golf Club in Plattsmouth, Neb. was also hit hard by the winds and storm.
“We just didn’t even know where to start,” Course Superintedent Steve Bogner told the station. “We kind of started getting a plan together and basically started at hole one and worked your way around.”
Bay Hill’s entire course was shut down for two weeks during a particularly busy time, Bogner added. “We had the College Word Series in town [and] we get a lot of players from that. So it just wasn’t a good deal,” he said.
Plattview’s Dickerson expressed excitement and optimism to KETV as the outlook for returning to normal activity was finally coming into view. “We took a hit, but we’ll be fine,” she said. “We’ll be better than ever.”
In Pasadena, Calif., the staff of Brookside Golf Club was dealing with a different form of course disruption, the Pasadena Star-News reported, after the property was the site of the first-ever Arroyo Seco Weekend, a two-day musical festival featuring performances by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and Mumford & Sons.
The event brought thousands of trampling feet, three heavy stages and a parking lot full of cars to the idyllic municipal golf course next to the Rose Bowl Stadium, the Star-News reported, as music fans turned the previously green fairways and roughs into a blotchy brown and toppled at least one tree by the end of the two-day event.
“We’re in the process of bringing the golf course back to life,” David Sams, Director of Golf Operations for the Rose Bowl Operating Company, told the Star-News. “I’ve seen a lot worse damage in the wintertime during Rose Bowl games.”
About 20 percent of the 36-hole golf course was used for the festival, Sams said.
The maintenance crews tried to prevent as much damage as possible before the festival even began, the Star-News reported. Greens and teeing grounds at the seven holes used for the festival were fenced off to avoid wear and tear, and the fairways and roughs that were open to the public were treated in advance to reduce the impact of all the extra foot traffic.
That area, which couldn’t be watered normally between the setup and tear down, is now receiving a healthy dose of fertilizer and water to revitalize the grounds, the Star-News reported
Hosting the event ramped up the need for extra irrigation of the course, the Star-News reported. While Brookside normally uses about 600,000 to 700,000 gallons of water per day, which is roughly 30 percent less than previous years, thanks to more efficient irrigation, the slice of land that hosted the festival needed an extra 200,000 gallons of water for 10 days, as part of the effort to bring the area back to life.
Some of the net water savings made during the festival may help to balance out that figure, Sams told the Star-News. And while course officials also hope the property’s drought-tolerant grass, now in its growing season, will flourish naturally with the extra love, some portions may need to be resodded. A full assessment hasn’t yet been finished, the Star-News reported, as the grass needs to be given a chance to grow.
“It is a science and an art,” said Darryl Dunn, the Rose Bowl’s General Manager. “If we can have it recover through watering and fertilizer and Mother Nature, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Per the lease agreement, the festival’s parent company, Anschutz Entertainment Group, has to foot the bill for repairs to the grounds, Dunn said.
Brookside GC is also replacing a small, non-native tree that was toppled by a couple trying to set up a hammock during the festival, the Star-News reported. The tree, which cracked at the base, narrowly missed hitting families resting in the shade, but no one was injured.
“That was really the only tree issue that we had,” Sams said.
Getting the course back in shape was all part of a learning curve for the first year of the festival, Sams told the Star-News. “This is new to us and we’re tracking everything,” he said.
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