Vandal targets golf course, damages several greens and fairways

Etiquette and niceties usually surround the sport of golf.

Unfortunately not everyone shares those sentiments. Over the weekend a vandal struck Strathcona Golf Course, and struck it hard, using the tires of a four-runner to cause significant damage to several greens and fairways at the Current River facility.

City director of golf Tom Forsythe on Monday said it was an expensive joyride for the city.

“They damaged four of our greens and three of our tees and one fairway doing doughnuts in different areas, just sharp turns,” Forsythe said. “With all the rain we got Saturday obviously the course conditions were soft and wet.

“They did some pretty significant damage to one of our greens in particular.”

Depending on how they choose to make the repair, either sodding or seeding, Forsythe estimated it could cost upward of $10,000 to repair, though he said things should be back to normal by this weekend, when the club championship is scheduled to be played. Police estimate the total damage between $15,000 and $20,000.

Still, because of the time of year, it’s not an easy fix.

“The difficulty getting into the heat of the summer is repairing it and keeping the green in play. We’ve got a couple of different options. Sod is probably out of the question for us right now, just because of the difficulty of establishing bent grass sod in this heat,” he said.

“It’s going to be a lot of manual work. We’re going to be doing a process we call plugging a green. Effectively it will be almost the equivalent of using paving stones. We’ve got a cutter that will cut the turf so it looks like a grass paving stone.”

The pieces, taken from two extra greens on the course, will then be knit in place.

“Then we’ll decide how we’re going to proceed to fix up the green we took the plugs from. We may sod that in the fall, we may be seeding it in a few weeks.”

Forsythe said he’s not sure why someone decided to callously try to destroy the golf course.

“It’s pretty discouraging to look at the damage and see where we have to go from here,” he said.

Damage was done to No. 2, 3, 4 and 5 greens, No. 3, 4 and 5 tee boxes and No. 5 fairway.