Many golf course operators and superintendents along the Grand Strand breathed a sigh of relief on Friday when sustained heavy rain hit the area for the first time in several weeks.
The Myrtle Beach area has been in the midst of a drought that has been deemed “extreme” in some portions of Horry County, and it has been compromising course conditions and the maintenance that they receive.
“This [rain] is pretty much going to buy me a month anyway before I have to worry about it,” said Founders Group International vice president and director of agronomy Max Morgan, whose company owns and operates 21 Grand Strand courses.
The drought has forced some courses to ration water, has caused noticeably brown and burned out conditions on portions of layouts, and even led Arcadian Shores Golf Club to cut their green fees, though the course received a copious amount of rain Thursday and Friday.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor as of Tuesday, areas of Horry County along the coast were in a moderate drought stage, while other areas of the county inland were in either a severe or extreme drought stage. Areas of Georgetown County were either “abnormally dry” or in a moderate drought.
The drought monitor, which is shared by the National Drought Mitigation Center, is produced through a partnership between a couple federal weather and climate agencies and a university research program.
A drought is exacerbated in the summer because the heat dries out the turf and evaporates water faster.
Mitigating the drought
Some courses have the benefit of external water sources such as large lakes, rivers or the Intracoastal Waterway.
Examples of water sources include Myrtlewood Golf Club, Grande Dunes and several other courses pulling from the waterway, Pine Lakes Country Club using a deep well, and Prestwick Country Club pulling water from a nearby lake.
Other courses’ water supplies are self-contained, with retention ponds that collect rainfall and runoff feeding the irrigation systems.
Those courses, which include Burning Ridge Golf Club and Myrtle Beach National Golf Club’s three courses, Morgan said, are more susceptible to drought conditions.
Morgan said water was rationed at both properties, and only greens at Burning Ridge and the MB National West Course have been watered leading up to the rain late this week. “We always have enough water for greens,” Morgan said. “. . . So the place is kind of dry and now it will catch up.
“We’ll get good rain [Friday] at National and Burning Ridge but we will not completely recharge our ponds. But it runs in the pond and also we don’t have to water for a couple days, so that eases it up.”
Morgan said courses will begin rationing water before the situation becomes dire because it’s not known when drought conditions will end.
“You can’t say, ‘Well I’ll use up all this water because Tuesday it’s going to rain,’ ” Morgan said. “You have to assume it’s not going to rain. It could not rain for 30 days, you never know.”
In 2002, a more prolonged drought caused some water sources to be compromised, such as brackish water moving farther up the waterway from its confluence area near the ocean.
“We’ve been way drier,” Morgan said. “We were really low that summer (2002). We drained every pond we could think of at Myrtle Beach National. So it hasn’t been anywhere near that dry.”
The dry conditions at golf courses aren’t consistent across the Grand Strand.
Morgan said courses on the north end and south end have largely received sufficient rainfall, while courses in the city of Myrtle Beach and along the 501 corridor have received very little.
Some courses, such as River Hills Golf & Country Club in Little River, have been cart path-only for a couple days after some deluges. “I wish it would stop raining in Little River,” Morgan said.
Because the rain over the past couple months has come in the form of thunderstorms rather than sustained rainfall, even courses in close proximity have received varying amounts of rain, if any at all over the same time frame.
“[Thursday] we had almost 2 inches at Burning Ridge and a quarter inch at Myrtle Beach National, and .15 at Wild Wing, and 3 inches at my house and I live in Carolina Forest,” Morgan said.
While challenging for superintendents, a drought is better than the other extreme.
“[Drought] causes extra roll and carts in the fairways and brown grass,” Morgan said. “We’ve never closed a golf course because it’s been too dry. But we’ve closed plenty of them because it’s been too wet.”
