Someone on a vehicle tore through the first green at a western Minnesota golf course, leaving behind “doughnut” tread marks and substantial damage, authorities said.

The Wheaton Golf Club is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of whoever carried out the deed either late Friday or early Saturday.

“The damage is devastating to the course,” the Traverse County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook posting that included several photos of the gouges that went around the perimeter and onto the green.

The terrain has been reseeded, and a temporary green has been made for the rest of the season, said Gary Laines, a course regular and former superintendent of the facility until his retirement last year.

“I don’t know what people are thinking when they do things like that,” Laines said.

Anyone with information about the incident on the nine-hole public course is urged to contact sheriff’s deputy Darrell Thomson at 1-320-422-7800.

Paul Walsh