NOTES FOR THE FUTURE

AVOIDING DANGEROUS PITFALLS IN THE FUTURE

After being involved in this extensive multi-year project, JIA management feels strongly we must lay out a road map for golf on Jekyll in the future that will avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes. Golf courses are expensive amenities to operate. However, their operational and maintenance costs can be anticipated and addressed in a timely fashion to avoid an activity of this size or scope. Course improvements should be staged in phases, and the proposed staggering of phases included in this plan should result in two-year windows which should allow for budgeting and accomplishing significant maintenance as needed on Pine Lakes, Great Dunes, and ultimately Indian Mound. Much of the recommended Golf Improvement Plan involves deferred maintenance and lack of funding. Deferred maintenance turned into emergency repairs when Indian Mound lost two greens to Pythium Blight disease in 2015; and as the USGA Greens Division report stated, the grasses on all 63 holes of Jekyll Island Golf are heavily mutated, all beyond their life expectancy and overdue to be replaced. Economic cycles will continue. Accordingly, the JIA MUST continually analyze costs and fees to assure adequate reserves are in place to address golf course capital costs when needed. Troubling economic times in the 2008-2010 period created a hostile environment for executing what should have been considered the “end of the line” for wholesale upgrades on any of the three 18-hole courses. Because of significant golf and island-wide deferred maintenance, JIA was not financially prepared to address the needs.

Deferred maintenance can be prevented by regularly scheduling proper repair/upgrading of irrigation systems, bunker replacement, and re-grassing of tees, fairways, and greens. These activities must become regularly budgeted items. As part of this Golf Improvement Plan, scheduled maintenance events should be written into the course design criteria by the golf course architectural firms as they develop plans for execution. The only way to avoid deferred maintenance in the future is for maintenance to be performed on schedule as recommended. Following these guides will be the responsibility of the JIA so as not to be repeated in 2036.