Or does it?

Golfers playing during 'Thunder Time' won't find vicious summer storms. The phrase denotes discounts on games and a subtle trembling of the ground.

Seventy feet below one end of the Independence gold course, its woner blasts limestone out of the earth. Between 1 and 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, golfers can feel the land quake slightly. This launches 'Thunder Time.'

The rumble results from explosions that a mining company, co-owned by WinterStone owner Harlan Limpus, uses to break up rock.

Rocca Processing crumbles 4,000 tons of limestone each day out of a rock formation under the course. Typically, 10 explosions last 10 to 15 seconds each. The whole process takes 10 to 15 minutes. Miners will haul chunks of rock out of the cave the following day for processing.

Golfer Terry Thatcher of Independence has felt the explosions.

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

Limpus says it won't.

And the vibration, head golf professional Tony Roberts is quick to say, is not enough to disturb a golfer or a golf ball.

Jeff Bollig, a 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.

As a tribute to the mine that lies beneath, limestone markers squat near the golf cart path alongside every hole at WinterStone.

'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.'

Even the course's name relates to mining. WinterStone came from Winterset, one of the limestone formations below the course.

At the mine site, trucks move in and out of the giant cave the company is creating. The monstrous vehicles roll into the darkness between limestone pillars responsible for stabilizing the cave.

Each truck receives a load of limestone to haul into the daylight at the processing area across from the course.

Unless it's 'Thunder Time,' uniformed golfers would never know the cave and processing area are there.

Miners enter the cave from a pit-like area where mounds of gray limestone chips wait to be carted off. The area is invisible from Kentucky Road and WinterStone.

Before the project was approved, residents of the sparsely populated area had expressed concern about the blasting, but many got behind the project because of its economic development potential.

Independence resident Sybil Griffey said she has gotten used to the noise, but she wonders whether the tremors might cause structural damage to nearby homes. Independence City Clerk Bruce Lowrey said he has received no recent complaints about blasting in the area.

The mining should last seven or eight more years. After Rocca mines out the limestone, another company will prepare the caves to hold businesses and storage areas, Limpus said.

Limpus, a mining man from a mining family: For 33 years, his life has been Kansas City area quarries. But when he wanted to mine at Missouri 291 and Kentucky Road, he decided to do more.

He built WinterStone, a public course, with some tax-increment financing from Independence. This allows the course to receive some of the sales and real estate tax revenue over a period of years to pay for development improvements.

Limpus received $1.6 million in tax-increment financing from Independence primarily for the course, and $2.6 million mostly for infrastructure improvements in northern Independence.

Winterstone opened May 5.

The course is tucked into a wooded area eat of Missouri 291. Although summer heat has created dry patches of grass, WinterStone offers 18 holes of roller-coaster hills, clusters of trees and water and sand hazards.

'It's a beautiful place,' Roberts said.