Wheat City close to reopening front nine

The head pro of Brandon’s Wheat City Golf Course is hoping the club will be operating with a full 18 holes as early as Monday.

The course has mainly been operating with only the back nine since flooding last month ravaged the first seven holes closest to the Assiniboine River.

“The water’s been receding, just not at a high rate — that’s the problem,” head pro Dave Scinocca said on Friday.

“We’re very close to getting the front nine back open, we’re hopeful for Monday or Tuesday next week.”

Some of the holes, Scinocca said, could be reopening as shortened par 3s.

The back nine, he said, was barely affected by the flooding that hit the city with a peak on July 13. Floodwaters remained above the banks of the Assiniboine for more than a week.

“You can easily play the back nine. It’s in great shape and we’ve had a fair bit of play in recent weeks, but certainly not the same as if we had all 18 holes open.”

The course was closed during flood preparation work in early July and reopened with as few as six operational holes.

Scinocca said the city’s decisions during flood preparations, which included raising the dike near the golf course, “essentially saved” the land.

“They added two to three feet of material on top of the current dike to get it to a level where they knew the water wasn’t going to go over the top,” he said. “If that wasn’t done with the height of that river, it would have certainly gone over the original dike and flooded the entire front nine, and that would have been devastating.”

The river peaked at 1,179.49 feet above sea level. As of Friday at 8 a.m., it was at 1,170.34 feet. That compares to a 1,161.77-foot measurement on the same day last year.

Scinocca said he needs the river to drop to at least 1,170 feet, if not closer to 1,168 feet, before his staff can resume cutting and driving mowers on the affected holes.

“We have pumps in certain areas for sure, but it’s like a waiting game, honestly,” he said.

Thankfully, he said, the fairways have been the most impacted. The tee boxes and greens have largely been unaffected.

“The greens … to rebuild or reseed those could take quite some time and potentially not be able to play them for the rest of the year,” he said.

“If you don’t have a green, it’s pretty hard to continue on. But some dark spots or dry spots in the fairways, that can be overlooked.”

Despite the challenging summer, the course is open for regular hours and leagues are coming back, simply playing the back nine twice to get their full rounds in.

Scinocca said it has been difficult with a large portion of the summer being affected.

“When you lose four, six, eight weeks of revenue coming in, it hurts financially big time for sure,” he said.

“But all we can do is look forward now into the future and try to get this course back to where it was at for next spring and look forward to a full season next year.”

He hopes the course will be back to regular hole lengths by the end of August, “at the latest.”

“As the river drops, everything’s going to dry up. We’re going to be able to cut. We’ll start reseeding,” Scinocca said. “I mean, it may not look pretty on some of those holes, but you’ll be able to play them. And that’s the main thing.”

He said staff are doing everything they can to get the course back to its original condition and they are very appreciative of the people who have continued to support the club.

» alambert@brandonsun.com