‘Horrendous damage’ to two golf courses

By Alistair October 21, 2019 10:55 Updated

Vandals have carried out ‘horrendous’ damage to at least two golf courses in recent days.

At Prestwich Golf Club in Greater Manchester a criminal drove an off-road buggy across the course and was seen performing ‘doughnuts’ on the greens.

The course was left badly damaged, with evidence of tyre marks and mounds of turf having been torn up. The golf club estimates it will cost tens of thousands of pounds to repair the damage.

Golf course manager, Chris Harding, said: “The damage is horrendous, it has been completely shredded. “It is going to cost a hell of a lot of money to repair.”

A major remodelling of the course, costing just shy of £1m, had been taking place at the club, which meant half the course had been closed for over a year.

Harding said the damaged section of course had only been laid down for three months and is yet to be played on.

Pictures uploaded to the club’s Facebook page showed a great deal of damage had been carried out.

However course work by the greenkeeping team also showed that significant progress had been made at rectifying the vandalism within a few days.

A few days later, vandals took a spade to greens at Willingdon Golf Club in East Sussex.

Course manager Luke Turner said: “We put in a lot of work and time and effort into creating excellent surfaces and some person decides to come along and vandalise and create damage.

“This is about the most severe I’ve seen in 10 to 11 years. It’s very extreme and premeditated.”

He added that someone had cut a hole in a fence and taken a spade or shovel and dug up large areas of three greens, at about four to five square metres wide.

“They have come equipped to do it,” he said.

“They have walked a considerable distance, almost a kilometre.

“It took about 25 hours to get the surfaces repaired enough to play on again. To get it back to the required high standard it will take most of the winter and into the spring.”

So far it has cost around £1,500 to repair the damage, and has put teams behind schedule.