Rumbles reveal golf course's loud underground secret

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Most golf courses offer a peaceful, relaxing atmosphere. But at WinterStone Golf Course, one hour every Monday through Saturday is "Thunder Time."

Even on a cloudless summer day, a rumble arises between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., but no storms come with it. Instead, the rumbling is coming from below the greens and fairways.

While golfers are chipping and putting each day, the mining company, Rocca Processing, blasts 4,000 tons of limestone out of a rock formation 70 feet below one end of the links. Typically, 10 explosions last 10 to 15 seconds each. The whole process takes 10 to 15 minutes. Miners haul the rock chunks out of the cave the following day for processing.

"You hear a little bit of a rumble, and you think, 'Is that thunder?"' said golfer Terry Thatcher, 51, of Independence. "But the sun is shining and it's 90 degrees. I kept thinking, 'What if the green collapses?"'

WinterStone owner Harlan Limpus, who co-owns Rocca, says that won't happen. But during "Thunder Time," he does offer a discount to golfers who play through the rumbles.

Tony Roberts, the course's head golf professional, said the vibration is not enough to disturb a golfer or a golf ball.

"We recognize that the reason for the golf course to be here is the quarry," Roberts said. "We want to make it well known that the two are connected."

Jeff Bollig, spokesman for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, said he knows of no other golf course in the country that rests on an active mine.

WinterStone, which gets its name from Winterset, one of the limestone formations under the course, opened May 5. The mining should last seven or eight more years, then another company will prepare the caves to hold businesses and storage areas, Limpus said.

"The thing that makes it so unusual is that you take an acre and turn it into three uses," said John Hayes, one of Limpus' partners at Rocca Processing. "Underground, you extract resources and turn them into a construction product. Then you turn it into development space, and you still have the surface acre on top.

"You can take 160 acres and have multiple uses."