Line of defense

When it comes to golf course vandalism, superintendents must fight back.

Mike Scott

Like many golf courses vying to attract players in a crowded and competitive market, Paxton Park Golf Course in Paducah, Ky., has made a bundle of significant and costly improvements in recent years, including Champion ultradwarf bermudagrass greens, upgraded water features, more trees and a brand new fleet of GPS-equipped golf cars.

“These are all significant course improvements that can be a target to vandals, which has forced us to think more proactively,” says Daniel Mullen, Paxton Park’s director of golf.

Every layout has to carefully evaluate its own situation and budget in determining how deep to dive into the costs of preventing vandalism. Tactics in this never-ending battle range from nearly prohibitive to simple common sense. Whether a facility chooses to go with full-time private security and perimeter fencing or a neighborhood watch and unyielding prosecution, it all comes down to “better safe than sorry.”

On the fence

Two years ago, Paxton Park added field fencing to approximately 30 percent of its borders in an effort to reduce motorized vandalism on the course. In the 24-plus months since the fencing went up, only one case of motorized mayhem has occurred, Mullen says.

“We wanted to keep the motorcycles and four-wheelers out because they do the most damage,” he says.

But “foot vandals” continued to cause damage, so course management added chain-link fence along 70 percent of the perimeter. “Access to the course by walking is virtually unlimited, so this was a necessary step,” Mullen says.

The fencing, which might surround the entire course when additional funding becomes available, also protects golfers and other individuals from harm on the course and limits the facility’s liability, Mullen adds.

Because the city-operated course receives no funding outside its own revenues, the five-digit cost of the fencing was picked up by a local charitable organization. Taxpayers are happy they didn’t have to foot the bill.

“We have to limit our liabilities and protect our investment, and the bottom line is that this fencing in no way affects the quality of play for our golfers,” Mullen says.

Wade Warms, CGCS at The Golf Club at Cinco Ranch in Katy, Texas, estimates that enclosing his course would require four to five miles of fencing -— something that would be too expensive for his course to realistically consider. But the fencing’s financial cost isn’t his only concern.

“It would also take away from the ambiance of the course and the surrounding atmosphere,” says the 12-year GCSAA member. “I don’t think it would go over well with the membership.”

Vandalism pole vault

In the background, Katy, Texas, police haul the driver of this overturned SUV to their squad cars after arresting the high school student for vandalizing the GC at Cinco Ranch. The suspect was prosecuted for the crime. Photo by Wade Warms, CGCS

Vandalism is a problem at a variety of city-owned golf courses in Minneapolis, says Jon Gurban, superintendent of the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, which oversees such courses within the city limits as Columbia Golf Club, Gross National Golf Club and Meadowbrook Golf Club.

Burying and securing old telephone poles or logs in strategic areas is an effective and relatively low-cost way of discouraging intruders on motorized vehicles, Gurban suggests.

Warms recommends eliminating a distinctive course logo from all signage, tee markers, ball-washing machines and other items. Cinco Ranch uses a generic graphic on those items as well as pin flags.

“When we used the actual course logo, we would have some of those items stolen four or five times every week,” recalls Warms, who has been at the Texas course for seven years. “Now it’s rare when one of them gets stolen.”

Law and order on the course

Perhaps the most proactive strategy for superintendents, Warms suggests, is developing a strong relationship with local law enforcement and communicating with those agencies about trends or forms of vandalism common at the course. He adds that arranging golf for local law enforcement officials is one method of establishing these relationships.

“We’ve become friendly enough with the local sheriff’s department where I have many of the sheriff’s department officials’ cell phone numbers and are on a first-name basis with them,” Warms says. “We have also become friendly with police officers from Houston who come out to fish in our ponds and lakes in the evening.”

That onsite presence can also reinforce the local community’s impression that law enforcement officials are in the area and are close with executives at a facility. Private, onsite security that patrols the course at night is costly — usually prohibitively so — but sometimes the security solution is a temporary one.

Paxton Park hires a private security firm to patrol the course for several hours at night and in the early morning hours during the weeks it plays host to two large regional events — the Pepsi Super Valu Irvin Cobb Golf Championship in July and the Texas Roadhouse Tri-States Senior Open each September — to prevent short-term damage that would affect play.

“Our key target periods (for temporary security) are obviously when there are going to be more young people in town or when they are likely to go joyriding, like graduation time,” Warms says.

Having greens crew staff on the course until early evening doing hand-watering and other projects can also be a deterrent, suggests Bruce R. Williams, CGCS at Los Angeles Country Club.

“Most of the time these are cases of mischievous kids rather than a real intent to harm or injure,” says Williams, a 32-year member of GCSAA and the association’s president in 1996.

Who’s watching out there?

Chambers Bay (Wash.) GC nearly lost its iconic Douglas fir – the only tree on the links-style layout and the area’s signature image – to an axe-wielding vandal in late April. Photo courtesy of David Wienecke

Developing a relationship with local law enforcement doesn’t have to be about giving benefits or perks to local police, says Rich Cinfio, public information officer commander for the San Carlos (Calif.) Police Department. Such agencies, though, can help golf courses combat vandals in subtle ways.

“We want to hear about challenges that any business has in fighting vandalism,” Cinfio says.

But superintendents should consider communicating to law enforcement course construction projects or other logistical issues such as substandard fences.

In many ways, informing these agencies of issues related to the course is much like what residents do when they register their residence on a “house watch” program during extended vacations or trips.

 “We want the lines of communication to be open so that when we have an officer on patrol in the area we can make a point to drive by the course and observe what is going on at different points of the day,” Cinfio says.

Then there is the traditional neighborhood watch approach. A Welsh golf course favored by film star Michael Douglas has been so plagued by attacks that its members have started patrolling the fairways at night to ward off vandals.

Wire reports last winter indicated that the South Wales Police in the United Kingdom have been urging residents living near Morriston Golf Club in Swansea to keep their eyes open to spot anyone entering the course, one of the oldest in the city.

One week in February, the club had thousands of pounds worth of equipment burgled from its premises, and in the past few months it has also been the target of numerous criminal-damage incidents. In the past nine months, greens and outbuildings have been damaged. In one of the worst attacks, the irrigation system was vandalized and 11 greens were seriously damaged.

When Jeff Yarborough, CGCS, was superintendent at Nansemond River Golf Club in Suffolk, Va., he partnered with a local neighborhood watch program so surrounding residents could help keep an eye on the course.

To effectively organize a proactive neighborhood watch team specific to a golf course, a superintendent must rely on a well-organized and dedicated group of individuals who are willing to give a few hours of their time every month. In Suffolk, the neighborhood watch group that patrols the areas around Nansemond River also patrols the surrounding residential neighborhood.

The group’s patrolling activities have been widely communicated with signs, and the effort is well known within the community.

While this neighborhood watch group hasn’t caught vandals in action on the course, the cases of vandalism are extremely low, says Nansemond River’s new superintendent, Michael Schiller, who began his current position last October. One of the few daily routines that Schiller has directed to prevent vandalism has been removing the pins and tee markers at a select few holes with easy access to the surrounding streets.

“It hasn’t been much of a problem for us, but I know there is a proactive plan in place as part of the (neighborhood watch program),” says Schiller, a six-year member of GCSAA. “It’s a great benefit to me and my staff because we have enough on our plates without having to worry about chasing down (vandals).”

Crime doesn’t pay

Regardless of how golf course vandals are caught, one way to deter future crimes is to aggressively prosecute all cases of vandalism, Warms suggests. Once word gets around that convicted and admitted vandals have received stiff penalties such as probation, a high fine or even a short jail sentence, the incidents of vandalism often decrease.

“We had one high school kid flip a vehicle over in one of our bunkers a few years ago, and even after he admitted he was responsible we did pursue punishment, which included probation,” Warms recalls.

Gurban also recommends an active approach to prevention. Minneapolis provides a dedicated phone number to report crimes on city properties and a separate, anonymous tip line for similar reports. These numbers are posted in public locations throughout the city’s golf courses, along with notices of convicted or admitted vandal prosecutions.

Educating area residents of the costs to them for vandalism of public property has also helped to increase the “neighborhood policing” impact, Gurban says.

“Our message is that vandalism destroys what your tax dollars have created,” Gurban says. “Each year, vandals destroy thousands of dollars worth of park facilities and equipment funded by tax dollars, and the damage on our golf courses can be significant.

 “A few minutes of destruction,” he notes, “can add up to huge losses for our city’s parks.”

Mike Scott is a White Lake, Mich.-based free-lance writer.