Second hurricane in a month pounds Florida golf courses

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Those planning an upcoming golf vacation in Florida may want to check with area golf courses first, in the days after Hurricane Frances' lumbering tour across the state.

Frances plodded across virtually the entire Florida peninsula up to and through the Labor Day weekend, damaging golf courses from east central to west-central Florida, and up through the Panhandle.

The Texas-sized storm made landfall along the east coast of the state with 115-mph winds, traveled west and came out north of Tampa. The storm then entered the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall again as a tropical storm in the mid-Panhandle, dumping wind, rain and debris on Tallahassee-area courses.

It was second major hurricane to hit Florida in less than a month. Courses on Florida's southwest region were already reeling from Hurricane Charley just three weeks earlier. The area affected stretched from Naples to Fort Myers and involved dozens of courses, some of which lost clubhouses and thousands of trees. Early estimates were that several courses would not reopen for weeks, or possibly months, because of the repairs needed

The courses affected by Hurricane Frances were in east-central Florida, including those from West Palm Beach to Titusville. The hurricane dumped up to 13 inches of rain, flooding fairways and greens.

"We have a lot of damage to the course as far as trees down," Kathryn Keefe of Monarch Country Club in Palm City told TravelGolf on Tuesday. "A lot of the cart paths are covered with debris. We do have power in the clubhouse now. We're expecting the course to be closed for at least a week."

The Club Med Sandpiper is also closed until the weekend.

"We hope to have our back nine open come Saturday morning," said head pro Butch Dusharm. "We were going to do some aeration on the front nine anyway. We planned to close three or four days. We have a lot of trees down, and a lot of debris. The fairways and greens held up real well, and we're working out there now to clean it up and get our signs back up."

Other courses in the area did not answer phone calls, as up to 4 million people were without the basic necessities immediately after the storm.

Golf courses in Palm Beach County were flooded, and the Royal Palm Golf Club in Lahore was used as the headquarters for the National Guard. Other courses in the storm's path are recovering, like Eagle Osprey in West Palm Beach and The Breakers golf course in Palm Beach.

Greg Norman and his wife rode out Frances at their home in Jupiter Beach, switching to a backup generator when their neighborhood lost power.

The storm, which cost possibly billions of dollars in conventional damage, cost golf courses hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost green fees around the state.

"If you start looking at recreation and leisure, golf courses, movie theaters, that type of thing - they took a huge hit this weekend " Polk County director of tourism Mark Jackson told The Lakeland Ledger.

Reports are still coming in from the damage caused by the storm in the Bahamas. In Freeport, for example, the Crowne Plaza Golf Resort and Casino lobby windows were shattered, and part of the roof caved in.

The storm made its second Florida landfall at St. Marks, about 30 miles south of Tallahassee, and slowly moved through the Panhandle Labor Day weekend with 65 mph winds and heavy rains.

Flooding and wind damage around Tallahassee caused the state government to shut down Tuesday, and many school districts, as well as six universities, were closed.

In Tallahassee, several courses were damaged. Summerbrooke Golf Club, for example, planned to re-open mid-week.

"We've got a lot of debris blown off trees on the course, and a lot of water," said Paul Peebles of Summerbrooke. "We only have one major tree down right now, which is good. We took enough precautions beforehand to get most of the water off the course; we pumped some of the lakes dry, where the fairways sloped down where the water runs so it wouldn't overflow. We're getting the debris off the greens so they can be mowed."

The storm moved into Georgia and Alabama after hitting Florida.

Officials estimate that insurance claims could climb as high as $6 billion in Florida. At least 10 deaths have been attributed to the storm.

September 7, 2004