After a rainy PGA Championship, the Louisville, Ky., property is returning to its normal state as vendors tear down major infrastructure and the club lays down new grass.
A deluge of rain showers left the course at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., muddy and messy during last weekend’s PGA Championship, but the rain did not stop members from returning to the course Tuesday to work on their game, the Louisville Business First reported.
General Manager Keith Reese said one of the first orders of business has been returning the clubhouse to a semblance of normalcy, moving kitchen and dining equipment back to their rightful places and fetching clubhouse seating that had been removed during the championship, Business First reported.
Reese said there’s not a lot his staff can do to repair the course until the major infrastructure is stripped down and removed. This includes bleacher seating, the media area at the 18th hole and numerous crosswalks, Business First reported.
Vendors are quickly tearing down the bleachers, and some of the seating for the PGA Championship already has been removed. “Tearing it down seems to happen twice as fast as when they build it,” Reese said.
Reese anticipates most of the major infrastructure installed for the championship will be removed by the end of the week. Valhalla will be closed Wednesday and Thursday, allowing vendors to remove the bulk of the infrastructure. Come Friday, he said, it should be “business as usual,” Business First reported.
Reese said about 20 or more buildings constructed specifically for the tournament remain on the perimeter of the course, including chalets and suites that provided accommodation for corporations and companies. He did not have an exact timeline on when the chalets would be removed, but he expects Valhalla will start looking like its normal self in the coming weeks and on into the fall, Business First reported.
The course took a beating from the weather, he noted, requiring crews to place roughly 30 truckloads of wood chips on the ground in an attempt to soak up the rain and ward off some of the mud—particularly the mud under spectators’ feet, Business First reported.
“It was a full-time job,” he said.
In a highly controlled environment built around precision for a sport that demands execution, “it’s the one thing we can’t control,” he said of the weather, which brought several downpours and delays in competition. New grass is being sown on the course to repair the wear-and-tear from the tournament, and he expects it to be fully grown by spring, Business First reported.
“The renovating of the turf has already begun with seeding of the areas outside the ropes,” he said. “The renovation work will continue through the fall.”
Had sunshine replaced the rain during the PGA Championship, it might have saved a few days of work for cleanup crews at Valhalla. But Reese said club officials learned from past tournament experiences, which cut down on surprises and delays in daily operations, Business First reported.
“Overall, everything kind of went as expected,” Reese said.
C&RB‘s September cover story will feature Valhalla Golf Club.
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.