Texas Deluge Slows But Doesn't Stop Golfers

More than 19 inches of rain pelted the city of Marble Falls, Texas, in less than four hours on June 27. The deluge turned this normally tranquil town of 7,300 people in the midst of the Highland Lakes region of Texas into a disaster area of epic proportions.

But as the sun rose two days after the deluge - called "The 500-Year Flood" by many in the area - almost all of the area's 12 golf courses were back welcoming players, albeit with some of the greens and fairways on a few layouts still under water.

More than 300 people were stranded through June 29 before area creeks, rivers and lakes subsided last weekend. Damages in Burnet and Llano counties - labeled a federal disaster area on July 2 by President George Bush - will exceed the currently estimated $137 million.

Road and bridge damage will cost the two counties at least $41.6 million, and agricultural loss has been estimated by the Farm Service Agency at $1.1 million. As of July 3, 315 homes and businesses were flooded, leaving families in need of temporary housing and assistance, and 98 businesses sustained uninsured losses. There were still 1,250 homes and businesses without potable water and up to 130 homes remain isolated due to impassable roads.

The Highland Lakes area has historically been a retirement and second-home region and a haven for water recreation and golf. But in the past five years, what used to be a sleepy resort and vacation area has become a less-than-remote suburb of Austin, some 45 miles to the southeast. As the region has grown, golf has blossomed as well. The much-ballyhooed Tom Fazio-designed Escondido opened last year near Horseshoe Bay, and Waterford Texas (a Bechtol-Russell design) is set to be unveiled this fall on the northern shores of Lake Travis.

Also in early construction phases is Summit Rock at Skywater, a Jack Nicklaus-signature course that will become the fourth track at Horseshoe Bay.

All of the golf courses in the two-county region endured some damage, though some facilities were spared the brunt of the storm and flooding. The most famous golf courses in the region - the three world-renowned Robert Trend Jones Sr. tracks at Horseshoe Bay Resort - suffered only minor flooding, the washing out of a handful of bunkers and the loss of only one tree to the storms, despite receiving more than 5½ inches of rain in less than 24 hours.

James Rolls, the head golf professional at Horseshoe Bay, said his resort courses avoided the worst-case scenarios that seemed headed in its direction. "We had standing water on some of the holes - especially down on No. 16 at Apple Rock where the elevation is at the course's lowest point, but all things considered, we came out of the storm very well," he said. "Some of our bunkers got washed out, and our staff is working overtime to make sure the sand is back to where it needs to be. We did not lose any cart paths and the water stayed off the greens, so we were very lucky."

Other courses - such as the semiprivate Country Club of Meadowlakes, the nine-hole Highland Lakes Golf Course next to Inks Lake, Delaware Springs in Burnet and Waterford Texas in Smithwick - had flooding or sustained damages that affected play and the courses' infrastructures.

At Meadowlakes, damages were still being accessed, but - considering that the staff could not even get to the course until Friday - Meadowlakes was the hardest hit of all area courses. Marble Falls was in the eye of the storm and Meadowlakes (which is its own municipality) is in the middle of Marble Falls, so it is only natural that this course took the brunt of the rainfall.

According to Meadowlakes' owner Rick Lohr, the No. 14 green was on Monday completely inaccessible from the course; the only was to get to it was from the adjoining street. The layout also lost a handful of cart paths and trees. Lohr will continue to assess the situation until a full-scale evaluation of the damages has been completed.

Every time the gates are opened on Buchanan Dam (the northernmost lake on the chain of man-made lakes created by damming on the Colorado River), Highland Lakes Golf Course has two holes - the No. 2 fairway and the No. 6 green on - that are swamped. This was again the case last week, and the water was still in place on July 2.

The loss of two holes on a track that has only nine may deter some golfers from playing, but that would be the exception at the Highland Lakes Golf Course. "We are open for business, and we have people playing out there right now," said Wayne Waychoff, who was manning the Highland Lakes pro shop Monday in the absence of said Mike Ocel, the golf course's general manager and his son-in-law. "The golfers just take a par on the holes they can't play. We may see the handicaps go down a little this month because of the rains."

The northern half of Burnet Country was not wracked by rain as much as Marble Falls, but there was plenty enough to cause Delaware Springs Golf Course in Burnet to lose 8-10 feet of cart path on the eighth hole and most of the sand out of a bunker on No. 16. The course was inaccessible because of the low-water crossing at Delaware Creek until 1 p.m. June 27, so the staff decided to keep Delaware Springs closed for the rest of the day. Most area courses were closed at least two days and some were out of commission for three.

The almost-ready-for-play course at Waterford is dealing with the potential for flooding on two of its fairways (Nos. 11 and 18) that are right next to a rising Lake Travis. Those holes were built with a flood-type situation in mind. But the fact that the lake has risen from 643 feet six months ago to 699.8 feet on Monday brings the lake more into play than one could have imagined when the course was in its planning stages.

Waterford's front nine is essentially ready to play. But the growth cycle for the holes on the back side has been affected by the wet spring and summer and should be open sometime in September.

Steve Habel is an Austin, Texas-based journalist. Since 1990, he has traveled around the globe covering news, business and sports assignments for various news bureaus, newspapers, magazines and websites. He also contributes to Business District magazine in Austin as managing editor and is the Texas football beat writer and a contributing editor for Horns Illustrated, the Austin-based magazine for University of Texas sports. Habel writes a weekly golf column for The River Cities Tribune in Marble Falls, Texas, and is a member of the Texas Golf Writers' Association.