VANDALS DIG BIG HOLES IN GOLF COURSE
$8,000 in damage more severe than last time
By DANIA AKKAD
Herald Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/20/2007 01:26:31 AM PDT
As the sun rose over the Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Course Tuesday, groundskeepers discovered that vandals had struck again.
But this time, instead of leaving behind the tire tracks typical of moonlight joyrides on the greens, these hooligans dug up the 14th green, causing at least $8,000 in damage.
Golf course Superintendent Mike Leach called it the worst vandalism he's seen.
"Someone has physically just beaten the heck out of a $30,000 green," he said. "It was as if someone took a roto-tiller to (it)."
Pacific Grove's golf course and several others, including the Monterey Peninsula Country Club, were also the target of pranksters six weeks ago, but those capers weren't nearly as damaging as Monday night's big dig, Leach said.
"We attributed (those incidences) to the end of the school year-type thing," he said.
Pacific Grove police Cmdr. Tom Uretzky said the case is unusual because there isn't a whole lot of evidence.
"It's generally a cart or a truck doing donuts. This is pretty weird because it's obviously not a vehicle," Uretzky said. "It's just a bunch of holes."
He said the incident, considered a felony because the damage totals more than $400, is not part of a greater wave of vandalism across the city.
Golf course destruction seems to happen at random, said Manny Sousa, superintendent at Poppy Hills Golf Course in Pebble Beach. He said his course hasn't been struck recently.
"They just tend to hit one course for a while and then
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move on," Sousa said Tuesday. "Hopefully, somebody will catch them before they mess with the next one."
Sometimes the vandalism can be fairly well-planned out, he said. When he was working at a golf course in Northern California, Sousa said, someone cut up small triangles throughout the green like a crossword puzzle.
Another time at the same course, he said, pranksters wrote messages in the grass with gasoline.
"(They weren't) exactly the messages you want to take home to grandma," he said.
In the end, Sousa said he's not sure exactly why vandals destroy golf courses.
"They don't realize that it's not the golfer that has to go out there and fix it. It's the crew. It falls on us and we have to put it back together," he said.
Leach said his staff will be fixing the torn-up course until at least Thursday. Until then, golfers will use a temporary green that has been set up.
Uretzky said an investigation is under way.