Trouble at Wild Dunes

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

Wild Dune's Links course is taking a beating with beach erosion to the point that the par-5 18th hole lost it's green and the nearby condo is in danger of following it into the sea.  Today's Charleston Post and Courier had the mayor standing on what is left of the 18th green watching the waves crashing ashore.  The course is now a par 70 with the 18th now a par 3.  Here's the article:

http://www.charleston.net/news/2007/oct/03/wind_tides_cut_away_at_isle_palms17914/

Sad news for golf in Charleston...

[Dale_McCallon]

Hopefully Trump will come in and buy it.  Spend a few hundred million dollars to salvage the hole and then have the best course in the South.

[Tim Gavrich]

Wow...what a bad turn of events.

I was there in early August and I must have been one of the last people to play 18 there as a par 5.

Is there any way that they might reconfigure the cart path and cut away some of the bushes off to the right in order to build out the green on that side?

[Peter Pratt]

That was the best Fazio greensite I've ever played! Very sad.

[Joe Bausch]

Wow, that is very sad.  Having played all my golf as a youngster in the midwest, I made a spring break golf trip my last year of high school to Charleston in 1981 and played Wild Dunes.  Being my first course w/ holes along an ocean, I'll never forget #17 and #18.

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

Here's another article with a video of a newscast on the erosion to the 18th:

http://www.live5news.com/news/state/10243251.html

[Andy Doyle]

We spent a week there for vacation in June.  The 18th was still playable, but barely.  There were clumps of Bermuda grass strewn for a mile or more along the beach down from the course.

I'll bet there are some very, very unhappy condo owners there.

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[Mike Benham]

I'll bet there are some very, very unhappy condo owners there.

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Perhaps the condo owners would rather have beach front property instead of watching cart riding golfers ruin their view ...

[Patrick Kiser]

They showed on the Today show this morning how it's getting much worse.

[Andy Doyle]

Perhaps the condo owners would rather have beach front property instead of watching cart riding golfers ruin their view ...

The condo building WAS beachfront - just south of the 18th green.  I don't know when it was built, but this massive building just ruined the visuals of the approach to the 18th green.  Now it's surf-front property.

I was there in Nov '06 too.  The ocean at that point had eaten the dunes up to the rough of the 18th fairway.  When I came back in June '07 the dunes and rough were gone, and the 18th fairway dropped off 10 feet to the sand.  I tried to cut my drive & hit it straight instead.  It ran straight down the fairway about 210 yards and right off a cliff down to the beach.  There was a work crew of guys trying to save the 18th green, but one of them mentioned they were just buying time.

That week when we were on the beach, there was a constant parade  of dump trucks delivering huge sand bags to the north end of the island to try and halt the erosion.  I've never been on a beach and had to tell my kids to watch out for the dump trucks.

You can't screw with Mother Nature.

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[Willie_Dow]

Mike - Courses that are built on land subject to these storms must preempt those conditions.  Buyers into these projects are subject to question, and those they bring along.

Get them out of golf !

[Brock Peyer]

That really stinks but that's what you get when you build your green on the sand versus the rocks (that's a parable, isn't it).

[Michael Whitaker]

A friend who is a member at Wild Dunes sent me this note:

Living here in WD, it has been hard to see this happen. Plans are for a new routing. The existing number 14 would become the new no 10. You would finish on the existing 13 a long par 4. The word I heard yesterday is that we cannot rebuild #18 until they can show the erosion won't happen again. I guess that means they will have to have a direct contact w/ God and get his or her approval!