By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
The Osoyoos Golf Club was vandalized last Saturday with two trucks tearing up the turf on the fairway of Desert #9 hole.
The vandals displayed some degree of intent as they cut the lock on an access gate on a service road leading in from Hwy. 3.
Doug Robb, General Manager of the Osoyoos Golf Club described it as “pretty disturbing.”
This is the first incident of its kind since Robb joined the club in 2017 he said. “We’ve been very fortunate that nothing like that happened,” he said.
“I’ve been at other properties where that’s happened and you’re vulnerable, especially this time of the year when we’re trying to kind of jumpstart.”
If there is a saving grace around this it’s the fact that the vandals chose to do their “donuts” on the fairway and not the green. “It would have been devastating if they had got on the green,” he says.
“So the guys will patch it up best they can,” which should take two or three days Robb says. “It’s really all we can do.” He added that it would just be handled in-house without pursuing any kind of insurance claim for the damage.
For Robb it’s not so much the actual damage that bothers him the most, but “for me it’s more of just a disturbing fact that people would actually take the time to do that. It’s alarming and so disrespectful,” he adds.
A resident of Dividend Ridge and a member of the golf club happened to be walking his dog that night and saw the two trucks, including make and colour, and that information has been passed to the RCMP. “So we’ll wait and see what transpires there.”
