Golf course staff all over the Island have been busy preparing over the last few days for the potentially violent onslaught of Hurricane Fabian.

During Bermuda's last major meteorological trauma in 1987, Hurricane Emily, most courses in Bermuda sustained a significant amount of damage to trees and bunkers which cost thousands of dollars to put right.

Those particularly concerned this time round, however, are Belmont Hills and Tucker's Point Golf Clubs, which have recently invested heavily in major restructuring programmes involving the planting of a large number of new trees.

According to Bruce Fraser, General Manager at Tucker's Point, a course which then known as Castle Harbour lost close to 400 trees and endured $250,000 worth of damage during Hurricane Emily, there are only a limited number of remedies available to greenskeepers and other staff in the face of such extreme weather.

"There really is not much you can do," he said.

"Hopefully the rain will come first and saturate the sand so we do not lose all the sand from the traps. Plus all the courses in Bermuda are now using silica sand which does not blow away like the old Bermuda sand used to."

"The process we are going to follow," he continued, "is to lock up all the golf carts so they do not fly away and then we will have to make a decision about when to let the last golfers out to play because obviously we cannot let anybody play in 30 knot winds.

"We also have to think about when to get all the staff off the course because we do not want them getting hurt.

"So we have been considering all the aspects at a time like this and not just the trees and the course itself."

Golf professional at Belmont Hills, Darren Swan, was also understandably worried yesterday about the potential destruction that could ensue at the brand new facility, particularly as, unlike Tucker's Point, the majority of their trees are new and have poorly developed root structures.

"Our trees are all so young so there is very little that can be done to protect them," said Swan.

"We are extremely concerned because we planted a lot of new palm trees out there and we are not sure how well they will stand up in the weather. We are also starting to board up the temporary clubhouse we have here so hopefully there will not be too much damage."

Meanwhile at the Mid Ocean Club, course superintendent Norman Furtado said he had "learnt from his past experiences" and was preparing the course much more efficiently for Fabian than he did for Emily.

"When Emily hit us we were not trimming any of our trees and that meant that they were top-heavy and a lot easier for the storms to blow over.

"We lost close to 200 trees - and those were just the big ones," he lamented.

"Since then we have been trimming all the big trees and they should now be able to withstand a lot more wind.

"We are also going to bring in all the flags and anything loose which could fly around. Other than that we can only sit back and hope for the best because we are at the mercy of Mother Nature."