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‘A hurricane with fire’
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“I would compare it to a hurricane with fire,” Bob Hertzing, superintendent at Valencia Country Club, and 11-year GCSAA Class A member, told GCM.
Mark Woodward, CGCS, director of golf operations for the city of San Diego and former GCSAA president, was evacuated from his home.
“We got the reverse 911 call… and just left,” Woodward, a 29-year Class A member, says. “We had already packed up a few changes of clothes, our pictures, other things that we knew we couldn’t replace. When the call came, we loaded up our cars and took off.”
Woodward was able to return to his home the next day, and damages to his courses — Torrey Pines, Balboa Park and Mission Bay — were minimal.
Dave Buckles, superintendent at Rancho Bernardo Inn, El Cajon, Calif., saw a row of trees enflamed across the street near the No. 6 green. The next thing he knew, he was jumping a fence and battling a fire with a garden hose.
“I decided to grab a hose to see what I could do,” Buckles says.
A wood fence provided the fire with fuel, so eventually Buckles kicked it down and threw it away from the houses. “You’d be surprised what adrenaline can do to a good Judo kick,” Buckles, a 23-year Class A member, laughs. He threw the hose on to the roof, climbed the patio, and started dousing a tree that had caught fire and was lying on the roof.
His assistant, Esteban Chavez, and crew member Jorge Rosales pulled up in golf cars and joined the fight. Chavez used a neighboring house’s hose, while Rosales dumped a plant from its pot, then used the pot as a bucket, carrying water from the pool.
“If they hadn’t showed up, it all would have burned,” Buckles says.
Eventually the entire crew joined in and moved up the street to help some homeowners in defending their houses. Word spread about the bravery of the crew, and now Buckles and his team find themselves media darlings.
First, a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune detailed their act of heroism. Then UniVision and TeleMundo did stories. Even the Ellen DeGeneres show has called.
The crew was invited to lunch by the mayor of San Diego, and San Diego Chargers defensive end Luis Castillo invited the group to his house, where they all received autographed jerseys and tickets to the Chargers-Colts game.
Buckles says he’s happy to see his hard-working crew get some credit.
“Realistically we could have stayed on the other side of the fence and taken bets on how high the flames would reach,” Buckles says. “But they didn’t think twice about helping out our neighbors.”
For a complete list of golf courses affected by the blaze, as well as stories from those courses and more from Buckles, visit the GCM blog at www.gcm.typepad.com.
The USGA and R&A Rules Ltd. have agreed on changes to the Rules of Golf effective in 2008. Beginning Jan. 1, a golfer will be allowed to lift a ball for identification in a bunker or water hazard, though now there will be a two-stroke penalty for playing a wrong ball from a hazard. In match play, the penalty will be a loss of hole. The changes, which affect Rules 12-2 and 15-3, have been under consideration for several years. The Golf Course Builders Association of America Foundation recently signed a partnership agreement with the National Recreation and Parks Association to expand its Sticks For Kids program to local park and recreation agencies under the NRPA. The program includes 10 sets of golf clubs and bags, a lesson plan, skill cards and a variety of marketing tools. Last February, 100 new programs were launched in 39 states and two international military bases. The new agreement includes a minimum of 100 additional programs for 2008 and 2009, or a minimum of 300 programs by 2009. |
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