[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

Originally Posted by dewilson58

Friday, September 22, 2017 - 12:00 PM

Over the past 2 weeks, the main focus has been to lower the levels of the water storage basins on the golf courses and throughout the community for your overall safety. This has been primarily accomplished by irrigating the golf courses and roadways. The good news is the golf courses performed exactly as designed and engineered by protecting the community from the large volumes of water received from Hurricane Irma.

We are pleased to announce that as of next Wednesday, September 27th we will be opening the following golf courses. As of noon today, you will be able to make a request for these courses in the tee time system for next Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday.

Executive courses: Pimlico, Churchill Greens, Belmont, Bogart, Bacall, Redfish Run, Tarpon Boil, Yankee Clipper, Southern Star, Walnut Grove, Briarwood, De La Vista, Chula Vista, Saddlebrook and Hawkes Bay.

Championship courses: Palmer Legends all 27 holes, Cane Garden all 27 holes, Lopez Legacy 18 holes (Torri Pines and Erinn Glenn), Havana 18 holes (Kenya and Hemingway), Tierra De Sol, Glenview Champions 13 holes (Stirrup Cup and Talley Ho 1-3 & 9) and Mallory Hill 18 holes (Amelia and Virginia).

While we are able to open these courses Wednesday, many areas of the community still have very high water levels and the courses will be needed to continue to lower the basin levels. We will open them as soon as the water levels have returned to normal and the courses are both safe and playable.

Keep in mind, upon re-opening, the courses will be safe and playable. However, in some cases they have sustained significant damage in some areas and are very wet from not only the storm, but the large amount of irrigation they have received in lowering the basins. Please be patient as we continue to work on returning our community’s golf courses to their normal condition.

Please check daily the Daily Sun, GolftheVillages.com, Districtgov.org , VNN or listen to WVLG for updates on reopening of more golf courses.

Is there any reason why the ponds on the golf courses and elsewhere in The Villages are not being dredged out so that they'll hold more water when we have an abundance of rain? It seems that we go from overflowing ponds to drought conditions in the winter.

Dredging the ponds would allow them to hold water and eliminate the need to close golf courses so that excess water can be expelled through the sprinkler system when the ponds get too full and also more water would be stored for the winter when water gets low.