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Hurricane Harvey-damaged golf course to hold grand opening

Posted at 10:40 PM, May 31, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-31 23:40:24-04

On Saturday, Palmilla Beach Resort in Port Aransas will hold a grand opening celebration for its golf course that spent 20 months closed, because of the damage Hurricane Harvey caused.

“The golf course took some significant damage from the storm,” resort asset manager Gregory Carr said.

All 18 holes needed to be renovated completely, but resort managers went in a different direction after researching the golf industry and the popularity of golf in Port Aransas.

“Most people who come down to Port Aransas are tourists, and they just don’t have five hours to play golf,” Carr said.

With studies showing that fewer people have the time to play golf in general these days, resort managers decided to cut their golf course in half. They abandoned the old front nine and restored the back nine instead. The new nine-hole course had a soft opening May 4, and tomorrow it will open officially.

“We’re super excited,” Carr said. “It’s been a long time in the making. I’m really proud of our team out here. They’ve gone through a tremendous amount of work to get the golf course to where it is now. It’s probably not ever been in this good of shape.”

A man with a golf-friendly name, who was starting off his bachelor party weekend by playing a round at Palmilla with friends, approves of the work Carr and his team has done.

“I’ve been down to Port A a lot and driven by, but I’ve never have been [to the resort],” Mitch Driver said. “I’m not sure what it looked like beforehand, but it’s in immaculate shape right now.”

Carr says it took almost two years of work to get in the course in this condition, but all of that labor benefited his workers who were dealing with Harvey-related problems of their own.

“After the storm there was a lot of folks on our team that didn’t know what their future looked like,” he said. “We assured them we would keep them working, and we did.”

Saturday’s grand opening runs from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Palmilla Beach Resort located at 258 Snapdragon in Port Aransas. There’s no free golf, but you’re invited to tour the course and see what else the resort has to offer.