Making the greens greener
Story and images By Ronald S. Montesano
Diamond Hawk Golf Course
Advance news of an impending golf course build is greeted with slightly less antipathy by the environmentally conscious than a shopping mall. If they only knew … For years golf courses were viewed as wolves in sheep’s clothing, a blight on the landscape. Perceived as the playgrounds of a select few, golf courses surely contributed to runoff chemical fertilizers. Purveyors of pesticides, these manicured lawns surely hid something from the general public, the golfing bourgeoisie, something that was bad for animals, plants, and any remaining residents of mother nature’s garden.

The truth is, many cynics were correct. Thanks to the example set by courses like Augusta National (home of the Masters), course committees and the paying public demanded layouts that were forever green, emerald oases of rigid leaves of grass. What it took to preserve this “look” was a combination of pesticides that would choke a horse. However, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1960, golf architects and superintendents began to pay attention to the unintentional-at-best, ignored-at-worst consequences of pesticide application. One of these architects was Dr. Michael Hurdzan of Columbus, Ohio. Hurdzan had graduated with a Ph.D. in environmental plant physiology and joined the U.S. Army Chemical Corps. He participated in the Agent Orange dispersal program in Vietnam, where he and countless others learned a valuable lesson on the effects of a runaway pesticide application program. Back in the States, Hurdzan worked in the golf industry and completed an invaluable literary contribution in 1996. Titled Golf Course Architecture, the volume included an entire chapter on golf and the environment. Dr. Hurdzan and others sounded the alarm not only of the role of the architect and superintendent as environmental stewards, but also in reversing the trend of “guilty until proven innocent,” an informal judging that seemed to take place in the media and public places where golf courses were concerned.

Harvest Hill Golf Course
The United States Golf Association, the ruling body of golf in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, was no stranger to controversy when it came to course set-up and conduct of its national Open championship. Long viewed as the most rigorous test of competitive golf in the world, the Open brought attention to this unassuming body of New Jersey-based regulators. In 1991, the USGA and the Audubon Society of New York united to raise awareness of protected ecosystems by extending the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary System to golf courses. Nearly twenty years old and recognized throughout the country, the system acts on six tenets to ensure the viable seaming of the land with the environment: environmental planning, wildlife and habitat management, member/public involvement, integrated pest management, water conservation, and water quality management. Although golfers might complain when their wayward shots enter an environmentally sensitive area, they understand that reclaiming habitats for all holds much greater importance than reclaiming one gleaming white orb.

Dr. Tim Vanini, director of the Nichols School Big Green Initiative (for environmental stewardship) and owner of a consulting company (New Dimensions Turfgrass Incorporated), sheds light on other enviable practices of the golf course industry. Vanini suggests that many outsiders compare certain renegade farming practices to those of golf courses, unaware as to how the careful development of the entire grass system (from blade to thatch to root structure) creates an ecosystem functional in retaining nutrients, filtering waste products, and generally stabilizing the environment. Through proper applications of time-release herbicide/fertilizer compounds, course superintendents are able to dictate when plants will take up nutrition. They must now adhere to rates, product types, and schedules that are pre-approved through yearly written applications to the department of environmental conservation and other watchdog agencies.

The lush turf of the mid-twentieth-century American country club is making way for a return to the fast and firm conditions of the game’s origins. Typically found on land that often linked sea to farmland, golf courses utilized the firm yet changing sand base to naturally encourage bounce and roll. In modern times, this return to fast and firm has an added benefit, as Witter explains: “The water issue is big. Water shortages and moratoriums across the sunbelt and the western states have been at their highest levels in history. The last place we need to worry about water is a golf course when hundreds of thousands of people are struggling for potable water. Less water and fertilizers are much better for the turf because turf must learn to survive more on its own as opposed to counting on spoon feeding all the time. Too much water and fertilizer cause the roots to stay close to the surface where they are weak and more susceptible to pests and diseases. When the roots are deep, searching for water and getting natural soil nutrients, they are much stronger and more able to withstand pest and disease attacks.”

The Links at Ivy Ridge
The first time you tee it up this year, take note of all the efforts to preserve the land around you. Birds land and nest in generation-proven migratory patterns, woodland creatures inhabit the tree stands and brush off the fairways, and the soil is preserved through careful cultivation. If you have the opportunity, play what I consider to be the area’s modern miracle, Diamond Hawk in Cheektowaga. Hardly nestled, it is surrounded by a trailer park, a single-unit neighborhood, two industrial parks, and an airport.

Somehow the land was preserved and improved, with thanks going to the design and execution teams. Perhaps the greatest example of land reclamation is Widow’s Walk Golf Course, a layout in Scituate, Massachusetts, on Boston’s south shore. An informal town dump, quite the eyesore, was seized and resurrected into a stunning eighteen-hole layout by the municipality and the Hurdzan design team. To celebrate the contribution that golf courses might make to preserving ecosystems while simultaneously creating recreational opportunities is to recognize their deserved place in our society. Getting golfers to dress better is another matter.

Ronald S. Montesano is the director of BuffaloGolfer.Com.


Back to the Table of Contents

Back to Top