Drought Forces Woodlake Golf Course To Close

A dried up fairway, and a dusty green.

"When we first got there in 2001, the water level was 17 feet down," Hank’s Swank Woodlake Ranch Golf Course Owner Hank Bochini said.
 
Hank’s Swank Woodlake Ranch Golf Course once a lawn of lush, green grass now a dry deserted pasture.

The owner Hank Bochini says he took over the course back in 2001. The first pump dried up about a year ago.

"The well went dry, the pump burned up and our small pump wont supply hardly any of the water we need," Bochini said.

So they only watered the greens.

"But this year I couldn’t even do that," Bochini said.

But eventually, there was nothing else he could do.

"This was something you couldn’t foresee. I mean the economy was bad enough but when the well went dry, I couldn’t fix that," Bochini said.

Bochini closed up the golf course in January, and continues to run his other course, Hank’s Swank Par 3, in Fresno.

But the one in Woodlake remains empty, apart from the random golf balls hit by the caretaker Kalub Diaz.

"All I can water is just two greens and a little spot to hit from so that’s pretty much all it is out here right now," Diaz said.

diaz has worked there for six years, and says he hopes to see the golf course he’s come to love become green and beautiful once again.

"I just hope, but we’ll just see," Diaz said.

But not nearly as much as the man who started it all. Bochini says he hopes to bring the course back to life.

"It hurts, it hurts. We put a lot of effort into it, and it was a fine golf course," Bochini said.

Bochini says he hopes to open the golf course again one day.