Race to ready golf course for Masters

It's a mission to have the drenched RACV Royal Pines Resort golf course ready in time for the Ladies Masters. Pic: Mike Batterham

THE Royal Pines Resort course was still covered by sheets of water, in some places several metres deep, but Ladies Masters tournament director Ben Tuohy remained confident the layout would recover in time for the lead-in pro-am tomorrow.

As a 30-strong working army of staff and volunteers put in the hard yards trying to drain the saturated course, Tuohy said he had never seen as much water on the course as this week.

"The greens surrounds and aprons have all been cut, but there are massive problems on about seven holes," Tuohy said.

"The bridge on the seventh hole is still under and we can't get to probably six other holes at the moment. So the players can't walk the course yet.

"Half of the adjoining eighth fairway was also under water."

"I have never seen as much water out there as this year."

Water levels in most of the course's lakes had dropped about a metre after high tide.

"Hopefully by late Wednesday it will be much better but there will not be any practice rounds for the players," Tuohy said.

"Given good weather the course should be right by Friday and we definitely want to have it right by Thursday for the pro-am."

For many of this year's players, they will not get the chance to have a practice round if not ranked high enough to get a pro-am start.

But at least those on the Coast for the first time should get a chance to walk the layout before teeing off on Friday.

Source: http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2013/01/30/446332_gold-coast-lead-story.html

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