Golf Might Not Survive the Century Due to Climate

The sport of golf today conjures images of lavish country clubs and pristine lawns that often alter and dominate environments that cannot sustain them. But the game’s history predates ground-moving bulldozers, industrialized irrigation systems, and even sprinklers and lawn mowers. Golf can trace its roots back to the late Middle Ages, when it was a game of bat and ball played in the rolling hills of Scotland. Birds and insects fly nearby and feed on native plants that grow freely on the lawn.

“Golf has traditionally been a very eco-friendly game,” Jason Straka, principal of Fry/Straka Global Golf Course Design, told The Daily Beast. Courses are initially found in the environment, as golfers will explore flat, clear land and find a way to play around obstacles without moving or changing the earth. “The environmental impact is fundamentally negative,” he said.

Today, golf is a favorite sport of the environmental movement, seen as a symbol of water-wasting luxury mainly enjoyed by the wealthy. Golf courses in arid regions of the American Southwest and Southern Europe have been the target of city water cuts — and sometimes accused of dodging them. In August, Extinction Rebellion climate activists descended on the Vieille-Toulouse golf club and the Garonne des Sept Deniers golf course in the south of France, fill their holes with cement and tearing up greens to protest their use of water as the area suffered a historic drought. While dozens of villages face water shortages, golfers enjoy a privilege “worthy of another world,” they said.

Golf doesn’t use as much water as hydro games like industrialized agriculture, but it certainly does use up a lot more water than its fair share. Golf course used more than two billion gallons of water per day for irrigation, or about 0.5 percent of the total water withdrawn in the United States, according to figures released by the United States Golf Association (USGA). Although water use varies greatly by region, up to half of Arizona’s golf courses have exceeded their annual water allocation over the past two decades, despite the Colorado River water shortage that the state has experienced. dependent. the Republic of Arizona Report in July. Many courses in Arizona have had their water cut off strongly resist.

Leading golf organizations, including the USGA, claim that golf courses as a whole have reduced water use. But the water levels used to maintain the flows in the Southwest and Southeast have remained virtually unchanged since 2005, according to a report released this year by the Golf Course Directors Association of America. And most golf courses still draw water from ponds, lakes, and wells. The same report shows only 21% of water used for US golf courses in 2020 has been recycledand that number is still low even in drought-prone areas like Phoenix.

Modern golf courses are often man-made environments, relying on grass and non-native plants that absorb water and disturb wildlife. It’s a completely unsustainable path—one that has led many golfers and golf course designers to accept the idea that, in order to survive, golf will have to learn from its roots.

In 2015, the city of Thousand Oaks, California hired Straka’s company to renovate Los Robles Greens, the city’s golf course, after being ordered by the state to cut off water during a historic drought. The firm reduce irrigation of course by 25 percent and replace dozens of acres of grass with thousands of native and drought-tolerant plants, dramatically cutting fertilizer and pesticide use in the process.

For Straka, making golf courses greener is his natural way of life. He grew up in rural Ohio camping and boating, fishing and swimming in his backyard farm pond, and golfing. He says spending his childhood in the wilderness and his connections led him to combine his passions — especially as his experiences at local family-run golf courses Phuong taught him the game can be low-tech and in tune with nature. “They don’t have this complicated maintenance budget,” he says, “and so things get a little more realistic.”

During her research at Cornell University, Straka plugged lysimeters (large circular tubes that measure the movement of water) into the ground to test different fertilizers and see which held the most water and collected the most. get the most nutrients. “We will find out which is not only the best agronomically but also the most environmentally friendly,” he said. In the early 1990s, the USGA and other major golf organizations began to embrace sustainability, funding research into meticulous golf course design features such as the precise assembly of wooden bridges that span the area. wetlands let sunlight through below, encouraging salamanders to cross the ball rolling tracks.

Straka insists that every golf course really considers its environmental impacts. After all, water is expensive in the Southwest and other arid environments where golf is popular; course owners say they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars about the country and some courses in California are supposed to spend up to 2 million dollars annuallygives course owners plenty of incentive to integrate low-water landscapes.

And even in parts of the country that don’t face drought, there’s a push to find new ways to use less. Fry/Straka recently renovated Philadelphia’s Union League National Golf Club, bringing over a million native trees from a nearby nursery to the site to reduce the ecological footprint of the course and preserve life animals, birds and insects

“Non-golfers don’t know what goes on behind the scenes,” says Straka. “There is an assumption that [golfers] Do not care. Completely not right.”

But golf was too slow to give up its dirtiest habits. For example, most current courses cannot simply convert to recycled water without building too expensive pipelines, unless the municipality they rely on does so first. And in some areas, such as clubs in France targeted by Extinction Rebellion activists, golf courses are even exempt from drought-related water cuts.

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Scotland-based GEO Foundation, which promotes sustainable golf and certifies golf courses, presented golf’s environmental innovations last year COP26 Summit in Glasgow. Those are certified courses from the Portuguese Resort Ombria, recently restore its riparian plant habitat and open on-site native plant nurseries, to Vietnam’s Hoiana Shores, has completed a luxury coastal course Only locally sourced building materials are used.

Another organization, Audubon International, certifies golf courses in the United States by charging golf course owners a fee to be certified for environmental sustainability. But the organization, which is funded by the USGA and several land and grass companies, has been accused of certifying courses that do not follow minimum wildlife protection standards, in some cases. allow hundreds of birds to be killed.

If you’re surprised to learn that a centuries-old bird conservation group is working on golf courses like these, you’re not alone—and you’d be wrong. Audubon International should not be confused with the National Audubon Association. In fact, the second company accused the upstart of having links to the business on its name. Frequent similarities puzzler misinformed that golf courses have received the Audubon Association stamp of approval.

The current executive director of the National Audubon Association, Elizabeth Gray, told The Daily Beast that the group is not affiliated with Audubon International and does not “endorse, support or partner with them in any activities or programs. any of their certifications.” “Golf courses must be managed responsibly to minimize harmful impacts on natural resources” resulting in habitat loss for wildlife species such as birds, she said. The National Audubon Association has gone to court to try to prevent Audubon International from using any of its names, ornithologist John James Audubon. The Bird Conservancy lost in a summary judgment. Audubon International did not respond to a request for comment.

However, branches of the National Audubon Association still work with golf courses to protect bird life, and USGA studies have shown that water hazards on golf courses can provide habitat for native amphibians such as newts and tadpoles, which help maintain the passage by consuming algae and plants that threaten to clog waterways. Others like the iguana eat mosquitoes, keeping them from eating nasty golfers.

However, progress is happening too slowly. And besides, most golfers still want eye-catching, well-manicured lawns—not the weedy hills and unpredictable bounces of medieval Scotland.

Janeen Driscoll, USGA’s director of brand communications, told The Daily Beast, some courses have addressed this by using a grass colorant during the winter months, rather than using large amounts. water to keep the grass green. The USGA has worked with several universities to research more sustainable grass that uses less water but retains the emerald green that golfers love.

But it will take a shift in perception for golfers to begin to embrace a more natural, less artificially vibrant game. And while the GEO has certified several major US golf tournaments, the majority of the courses on the PGA Tour and its emerging competitor, the Saudi-backed LIV Golf, make no lasting commitment. what steady.

The truth may lie in the middle: build new yards to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors and retrofit existing ones to use less water for irrigation and swap water-intensive crops for native plants.

Straka asserts that the excesses of modern golf are just a symptom of a larger problem. “The golf course was just one aspect of the suburbs and housing communities and things exploded after the Second World War,” he said.

And when activists insist that golf courses be closed in areas that run out of water, Straka rages, believing that there are more worthy causes than a community of games that can be enjoyed together.

“The bigger question is not whether golf belongs to Phoenix,” he said. “The bigger question is whether Phoenix belongs there.”