Green golf.

Golfers and Environmentalists Used to Tee Each Other Off, But Course Designers Are Showing a New Awareness

Golf course architect Dr. Mike Hurdzan of Columbus, Ohio tells this story: It was 1984. Hurdzan and his colleagues had created a course on Cape Cod, Massachusetts called Dennis Highlands. It was designed with the environment in mind --planted with native, low-maintenance grasses that required less watering and fewer pesticides than the average course.

That same year, at another course nearby, designers "chose to use grasses that needed more fertilizer, more pesticides, more fossil fuels, more of everything," recalls Hurdzan. Dennis Highlands had a much gentler effect on the environment, but when the coveted golf course ratings came out, the one that used luxuriant grasses beat out Hurdzan's.

"Dennis Highlands was the right thing to do, but the golfers said, That one's greener than this one--I want to play that one," says Hurdzan, who for 25 years has been trying to incorporate a course's native environment into its design, often to the chagrin of owners and developers. "The problem is that the North American golfer thinks you can't play golf unless you have a golf cart, a six-pack of beer and green grass."

For years, the mentality on most golf courses has been the greener the better. But that has come at a price--namely, tons of pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides and billions of gallons of water--in order to make the course look "natural." But golfers may be in for a surprise. There's a quiet movement among designers, and much of the golfing establishment as well, toward building eco-friendly courses that feature everything from computerized irrigation systems that use recycled water to holistic pest control and organic fertilizer.

The movement has huge implications: There are currently more than 14,750 golf courses in the U.S. alone, and about three new ones open each week. Now under development are courses atop landfills, courses designed to purify waste water from nearby sewage treatment plants and, most common, courses that enhance their natural environment rather than bulldoze it, then keep the grounds in check with the preventative Integrated Pest Management system, which involves careful native plant selection and water management to replace wall-to-wall sprays of pesticides.

As a standard, more and more designers are using places like Collier's Reserve Country Club in southwestern Florida, which opened in 1994. As a result of its' environmental efforts, the club was pronounced the first-ever NewYork Audubon Society Signature Cooperative Sanctuary Golf Course.

Collier's, and many other courses, are changing the notion that golf and the environment don't Mix. Even the United States Golf Association is playing through, with an $11 million research project on turf grass, looking for ways to breed new varieties that require little water, pest control or fertilizers, and analyzing pesticides to find those less likely to leach into groundwater.

According to manager Tim Hiers, Collier's concentrated on wildlife conservation, energy efficiency, waste management, water conservation and habitat enhancement. The results are clear to see: 39 acres of created lakes and wetlands. More than 130 acres of habitat preserve. Deer and bird feeders made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled materials. Some 500,000 newly planted native plants, which require little, if any, irrigation, pest control or fertilizers. And stockpiled timber that serves as home to bobcats and possums, foxes and rabbits.

While most golf superintendents laud Hier's efforts, they agree that it's much easier to design a "green" course than to convert an established one. Courses 25, 40 or even 70 years old can present significant environmental problems. The dinosaurs are still out there, says Bruce Williams, who was born at and now presides over the Bob O'Link, a 75-year-old course outside of Chicago that his father ran until 1979. "When you have a golf course that's 75 years old, built on what was wetlands at one time, you can't go back and rebuild. It's like retrofitting a house. You can't rebuild the wetlands because they haven't existed for 75 years."

For years, golfers and environmentalists battled it out. Course developers claimed their efforts did everything from adding to the job base to creating natural firebreaks. They also boasted of providing a more environmentally pleasant development alternative to, say, a shopping mall. Most important, they touted their works as beautiful seas of green that produced oxygen for the neighborhood.

But consider the extreme lengths to which many courses go to make that grass green. If the course is in the desert, as in those lush, picture-perfect courses of Palm Springs, California, up to a million gallons of water a day might be pumped into the ground. And to keep that grass green, the average golf course dumps regular treatments of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and fertilizer--more per square foot than the average farm. The New York Attorney General's office found in a 1991 study, for example, that some Long Island golf courses applied more than 25 tons of pesticides annually on courses that were not even used year-round. That's more than six times what farmers typically use per acre.

Such figures have long teed off environmentalists, who have led crusades against golf courses since the 1970s, when birds and fish were common casualties of unrestricted pesticides. Often, the birds had been driven from native trees, plants and wetlands that were bulldozed to make way for exotic holes on man-made hills.

Sadly, that bulldozing continues. Several designers point to the lush Tournament Players Club in Jacksonville, Florida, as an example of what is sometimes done in the name of perfection. "We literally turned the Earth upside down," said one. "We took the soil-on top and put it on bottom and the soil on bottom and put it on top. It was almost like building the Panama Canal."

Hiers believes those examples will become rarer, and Hurdzan agrees. In fact, Hurdzan tells another story, this time about Devil's Paint Brush, a course he designed in Toronto in 1993. Builders removed a total of three trees to build the course. The developers used European native grasses that require very little fertilizer and water. The superintendents use one pesticide--for snow mold in the winter. "It's the most fun to play," Hurdzan says. "Once you hit the ball, it bounces and rolls to someplace else."

Hurdzan wasn't certain how the golf establishment would react to his efforts. But this story had a happier ending. Golf Digest named Devil's Paint Brush the top new course in Canada.--Carol Leonetti

RELATED ARTICLE: E's Own Golfers

What kind of golfer reads E Magazine? The eco-conscious golfer! Golf Digest magazine conducted a poll of its own and E readers on matters related to golf late last year, and produced some surprising results. According to the magazine's Research Resource Center, 54 percent of E readers play golf, and more than a quarter play 48 or more times a year.

Not so suprising: E's readers are more likely than Golf Digest readers to support environmental reform of the sport. Some 55 percent of our readers, for instance, think golf course water consumption needs to be regulated. And 70 percent think course pesticide use poses a potential health hazard to the players. Finally, 72 percent think that golf courses that preserve the natural habitat "increase golfers' enjoyment of the game." That goes along with the overwhelming consensus--80 percent of our readers--who think that golfers "should be willing to play on brown grass" when it doesn't rain.