The game of golf as we know it is in decline.
According to the National Golf Federation, in the United States, more golf courses closed than opened for the eighth year in a row, participation among 18-34 year-olds has declined thirty percent over the past twenty years, and the U.S. has lost around five million players over the last decade.
What do these statistics say about the state of the game? Basically, people are losing interest in the game, and many Millennials are forgoing the experience altogether.
While this is sad news for owners of golf courses and enthusiasts of wearing silly pants, this is potentially positive news for the environment.
Good News for the Environment
Since the goal of golf course maintenance is to have a pristine stretch of grass that more closely resembles Astroturf than anything from nature, best ecological practices are not necessarily a top priority.
Golf courses keep the grass short, well-manicured and free of any living organisms by spraying generous amounts of herbicides, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and mowing frequently.
Pesticides and Herbicides
Golf courses are historically known for their overuse of herbicides and pesticides. After controversy in the 1990s surrounding high rates of certain types cancers among golf course superintendents, player organizations and the Golf Course Superintendents Association joined together with the environmental advocacy group Beyond Pesticides to push for the adoption of Environmental Principles for Golf Courses in the United States.
The Green Star Awards, introduced by Golf Digest in 2009 went a step further to recognize golf courses that participate in energy conservation, recycling and green cleaning efforts.
However, according to Beyond Pesticides, “efforts to eliminate a reliance on pesticides still lag behind other environmental action,” and “more attention is needed to the basic turf management issues related to soil microorganisms and building soil biomass as a tool for enhancing plant health and resistance to diseases.”
Frequent Mowing
Another problem not addressed is excessive mowing. Grounds Magazine says that a typical golf course mows every day and recommends frequent mowing to improve turf quality. Since golf courses tend to use riding mowers fueled by gas, this translates into a lot of fuel burnt to cover massive amounts of land - repeated on a daily basis.
Runoff and Erosion
Golf courses also promote the destruction of natural habitats, and changes in local hydrology and topography, according to the study, A Global Perspective on the Environmental Impact of Golf.
Golf course maintenance commonly involves deforestation and clearing native species of vegetation, which in turn causes gullying and soil erosion, leading to sediment runoff into nearby bodies of water. This is detrimental to lake and stream plants and animals.
Runoff also provides excess nutrients to bodies of water that can cause out of control downstream algae blooms.
Other (Better) Uses for Golf Courses
Golf courses take up about 1,504,210 acres of land in the U.S., which arguably could be put to better use. The late comedian George Carlin was greatly bothered by the amount of space taken up by golf courses and even suggested solving the problem of lack of availability of low-cost housing by building houses for the homeless on golf courses.
Aside from turning golf courses into homeless shelters (which likely won’t happen anytime soon), just letting the land go fallow and less manicured would be beneficial for the environment.
Granted, it probably wouldn’t be much of an improvement if it were paved or taken over by urban sprawl instead. Better potential uses for the space include wind farms, areas for solar panels, parks, community gardens, or land for free-range livestock grazing, to name a few examples.
Copy and paste the following to see just how environmentally friendly golf can be:
http://www2.gcsaa.org/gcm/2000/feb00/02southern.html
Golf is in decline for the most part due to the modern players and the supporting staff to pamper them to actual death. Gone is the challenge, gone are the real golf courses that once made the Royal & Ancient Game of Golf that made it an international Game.
We need to look no further than the greed and money that today is Golf. It’s destroyed the real Green Keepers skills of nurturing the courses, using natural remedies rather than fast acting pollutants that kill the very fish in both sea and/or rivers. However we cannot place blame on the club owner or the designer for all they are doing is servicing the requirements of the modern players.
I hate using the term Golfers as from what I observe there are still many about , nevertheless they are totally outnumbered by players who care little if nothing for the game of golf which they consider is all about riding about on a cart using aids for whatever and utilising as much information from outside sources as possible. The total opposite to what golf is all about – that is the challenge, of Man facing the Natural mixed with a little cunning from Man to test and require the player to rise to the challenge of becoming a golfer through the simple action of being committed being up to face the hazards placed before him by the Gods of Men and Nature herself.
Then mention GCA to most players and the reaction is one of utter nothingness, of blank expression as if you are talking a foreign language, the refinement of what a course brings to the game seems to be beyond most in either the development of skill or more simply put their understanding of the game they are meant to be playing.
Golf is in decline because we have first forgotten how to play it and second ignored the GCA of the game that was developed in the 19th Century. Ask 100 designers/architects the history of their chosen profession pre 1900 and what as many struggle to give any actual information, try this question i.e. the reason for the staking/pegging the course and the striking of a few shots during the process, yes you will see a golfing blind curtain descending over their eyes.
How can we ignore history – well we have and the result is a game requiring little commitment, hardly a challenge and hazards that are more akin to helping aids i.e. hard shallow compacted bunkers. Today we have turned many a wonderful golf course into an over watered over engineered over manicured glorified Park instead of a natural links based course that is in itself part sustainable.
The damage is not yet complete- we through technology and the refusal of the Governing Body to act upon the distance a modern ball can travel mainly in the air. This requirement of the Macho Player is killing great designs, great holes all for the sake of a handful of long hitters who probably would have difficulty making a gutty ball fly using a Hickory club - Golf is not and never was about distance, it’s about navigating around an obstacle course created by Man/Nature using one’s mind and body not aided by any outside source. It’s the Dog leg Holes, it’s the blind Holes, it’s the deep pot bunkers its about penal if the shot is not worthy of the hole or the players understanding of the GCA – Yes its not rocket science – its just Golf so why has the game declined in the last 50 -70 years – look around where is the challenge – you have bloody killed it because of your own lack of commitment.
However you will be doing nothing about it because you do not care, don’t give a fig leaf about the game or in all honesty just can’t be bothered to play golf if it appears to push you, makes you think, or get you off your arse, yes its just too much hassle.
In closing there is another reason golf is in decline – the failure to build golf course on “Land Fit For Purpose” again simple little requirement but ignored by many a designer and his boss the money man – the again we still fall back on the R&A who have failed golf at nearly every turn and still not accountable to anyone for their multitude of cockups.
Address the real issues facing golf instead of always ignoring them because players just do not want to be golfers – you will also improve slow play in the process.
Melvyn Hunter Morrow (from a 300 year line of Golfers and Green Keepers)
Thank you for your comment, Melvyn.
Anyone interested in learning more about how the game was originally played can get more info at
http://golfclubatlas.com/melvyn-hunter-morrow-page-3/
I guess one could also argue that a decline in human beings would also be good for the envirnoment. Wait a minute, didn’t T.R. Malthus try to make that argument over 200 years ago?
This article is ridiculous. Just one person spouting off information that they don’t know anything about followed up by people that believe anything they read. Superintendents are professionals that are licensed and know a lot about what products and being sprayed and spraying in a safe and proper way established by the EPA. What a joke.
I think your article misses the point. Golf is bad for the environment not solely because of its existence, but the demands that American golfers place on maintenance standards. Go to Scotland/Ireland, and the golf courses are breeding grounds for various species. For example, the Old Course at St. Andrews, home to golfs most important championship next year, has a myriad of different species, so much so that in 1 square meter, you are bound to find at least 40.
I’m hoping to be a golf course architect, one who changes the perspective and maintenance standards of golf, and create a sustainable future for both the environment and the game. Golf does not need to be played on perfect green grass, all you need to do is look at Pacific Dunes, ranked in the top 20 golf courses in the world, to see that. (That project also took great advantage of removing huge swaths of invasive gorse and scottish broom, non-native plants to the Oregon Coast). Fertilizers are not always necessary, as evidenced at Sharp Park in Pacifica, CA or Vineyard Golf Club (an exclusive, private club at that!) in Martha’s Vineyard, both of which have gone completely organic. Golf courses built on landfills, like Ferry Point or Liberty National in New York, are surely far better for the environment than what was there before. Even Chambers Bay, host of the United States Open next year, was built on a reclaimed gravel mine.
I provided my email in the comments, I’d love to talk more about this if you are curious to hear more, but I don’t want to dedicate too much of my time to something that’s just in a comments section.
Liberty National is in New Jersey. Had interesting times there.
Actually, the correction in openings v. closings has more top do with certain markets having been overbuilt while the types of courses (public v. private) have been out of whack in certain areas. Yes, golf has lost some players, but the baby boomers will more than make up for any lost players.
Frankly, in-fill housing is much better for the the environment than getting rid of open space that happens to be a golf course where people gather, spend more than 2o minutes with each other (usually it is close to 4-5 hours — how about that in todays world of bits and pieces and texts and tweets?) and recreate in the outdoors.
Moreover, the environmental story is clearly from one perspective. Consider that golf courses are sustainable open space. The largest acreage of privately maintained wetlands in the U.S. is where? Golf courses. Courses also handle drainage for communities.
As for pesticides, golf courses are business entities that typically sustain themselves financially. No golf course uses more applied agents than is necessary, and all 50 states require a licensed technician to make the application to a golf course. Unlike the agricultural crops across much of the U.S. where government subsidies pay for much of the pesticides — and the 14 year old nephew of the farmer is mostly free to tap a 55 gal. drum and spray away — golf courses are responsible stewards of the environment.
Mowing frequently is an issue? When you consider the trade off of millions and millions of plants that serve to filter runoff and pollutants, I doubt this is a valid axe to grind. Golf course maintenance equipment is among the most sophisticated available. Again, as business entities that have to pay for themselves, fuel is not wasted.
An interesting fact is that virtually all of the innovations in turf care, landscape care and irrigation technology have come from golf where innovation drives the bottom line. So, next time you walk through the Home Depot isles and see some neat landscape innovation, take comfort that a golf course superintendent was likely the catalyst who got the idea accepted — and proven.
There are environmental no-nos we should be talking about. Golf courses are not one of them. They do far more good for society, especially in contact to urban environments and communities where they provide such valuable open space.
Good to bring the toxins use and the by-products of these chemicals to peoples attention.