After what is believed to be the longest consecutive amount of time residents of The Villages have had to go without golf, some courses will re-open on Wednesday September 27, 2017.
Here's the Press Release from Golf Management Solutions (GMS) for Executive and Championship Golf Courses:
Over the past 2 weeks, the main focus has been to lower the levels of the water storage basins on the golf courses and throughout the community for your overall safety. This has been primarily accomplished by irrigating the golf courses and roadways. The good news is the golf courses performed exactly as designed and engineered by protecting the community from the large volumes of water received from Hurricane Irma.
We are pleased to announce that as of next Wednesday, September 27th we will be opening the following golf courses. As of noon today, you will be able to make a request for these courses in the tee time system for next Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday.
Executive courses:
Pimlico, Belmont, Churchill Greens, Bogart, Bacall, Redfish Run, Tarpon Boil, Yankee Clipper, Southern Star, Walnut Grove, Briarwood, De La Vista, Chula Vista, Saddlebrook and Hawkes Bay.
Championship courses:
Palmer Legends all 27 holes, Cane Garden all 27 holes, Lopez Legacy 18 holes (Torri Pines and Erinn Glenn), Havana 18 holes (Kenya and Hemingway), Tierra De Sol, Glenview Champions 13 holes (Stirrup Cup and Tally Ho 1-3 & 9) and Mallory Hill 18 holes (Amelia and Virginia).
While we are able to open these courses Wednesday, many areas of the community still have very high water levels and the courses will be needed to continue to lower the basin levels. We will open them as soon as the water levels have returned to normal and the courses are both safe and playable.
Keep in mind, upon re-opening, the courses will be safe and playable. However, in some cases they have sustained significant damage in some areas and are very wet from not only the storm, but the large amount of irrigation they have received in lowering the basins. Please be patient as we continue to work on returning our community’s golf courses to their normal conditioning.
Here's drone footage of what a few of the courses looked like less than 48 hours after Irma played through:
And then in this video you can see the improvement that had been made just 5 days later:
A lot of retirees who don't play golf are opting for communities that do not have golf courses, but the interesting this to me here…you might have caught it in the press release above…is that the golf courses are designed to protect the community (homes and other amenities) from large volumes of water.
I can only imagine where all that water might have gone if The Villages didn't have all those golf courses. Scary!
Related news…
Villages officials are calling Irma a “150-year event” [Villages-News]
