Vandals struck at Royal Eastbourne Golf Club in East Sussex last week, with 12 greens across its two courses suffering extensive damage on Thursday night [February 26-27].
The club’s 100-year-old Devonshire course had had six greens vandalised, with another six having been defaced on its nine-hole Hartington course.
The club was forced to close the course on Friday to assess the damage, although it could take several weeks for repairs to be completed.
As of March 1, both courses were open again, with 11 temporary greens in operation on the Devonshire course and seven temporary greens on the Hartington.
General manager Tom Breach described the damage as “significant” and “senseless”. “The first we knew about it was when the course manager was out doing his inspection rounds on Friday morning,” he said. “Whoever did it used shovels to dig up big plugs of earth before chopping them up into pieces, thereby making it impossible to simply place them back in the ground.”
He added that it must have taken the culprits a “good hour or more” to cover the distance involved, but that no-one had been caught on the club’s CCTV cameras.
“It doesn’t seem to me to have been the work of a couple of kids messing around – it feels fairly deliberate,” he added. “It’s likely to take a few weeks before those greens are playable again,” said Breach.
Anyone with any information about the incident, which was reported to Sussex Police, have been asked to call CrimeStoppers at 0800 555111.