How Green's Your Golf Course?

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“Public perception is the problem,” says Samuelson, who has degrees in agronomy and plant genetics from the University of Arizona. “We know what to do with the chemicals, how much to use, which ones to use.”  As an example, he notes that he might use a pound of dry fertilizer per 1,000 square feet of turf. A homeowner with about 2,000 square feet of turf might put down half of an 18-pound bag, which would be about 4.5 pounds per 1,000 square foot. That’s 450 percent more than Samuelson uses, who says, “It’s the homeowner who has to be educated on how to take care of the environment.”

Course designers like the world-renowned Kyle Phillips of Granite Bay do their best to plan courses that not only enhance the natural beauty of the landscape but help the environment. Phillips, the man who designed famed Kingsbarns in Scotland and the Granite Bay Golf Club, doesn’t talk about laying out endless strips of sod but of “mitigation areas” and routing golfers around “riparian areas and habitats.”   

During construction of the Morgan Creek development near Roseville, oak trees were cut down for roads and homes. “Maybe one was cut down for the course,” Phillips points out. “So the golf course became the oak tree mitigation part of the project,” Phillips points out. New oaks were planted, older ones transplanted, and  Phillips worked them into his course layout. Such intrusions on course design are common to his business. “It happens every day,” he says.

The Turkey Ranch course in Lincoln gets its name from the former turkey ranch next to the property. Superintendents and designers cannot raise the point fast enough that, in essence, golf courses supply the land with refreshing stewardship compared to the high amount of chemicals found in common (and legal) agricultural practices.

Overseeing Turkey Ranch’s ecology, Superintendent Matt Dillon spends a lot of time testing the water quality in the ponds on the course. Some of those ponds catch the chemicals applied long ago to raise turkeys. Ponds on golf courses may add danger to a golf shot, but superintendents consider them holding tanks. For it is here that the chemicals, whether manmade fertilizers or long-ago leftovers from the land’s previous use, come to dissipate. “The water cannot have anything in it when it leaves the course and enters the watershed,” Dillon points out.

Bill Allayaud, the legislative director for Sierra Club California in Sacramento, is a golfer who plays about six times a year. He’s heard the industry’s claims but asks, “If I play golf and see a heron, does that mean the course is good for the environment? I don’t have the answer for that.”

Allayaud concedes that, for all the talk in golf about titanium drivers and high-tech golf balls, a great deal of research has gone into agronomy, with programs at Penn State and Michigan State leading the way. He knows about golf course builders working with Audubon International, which is not associated with the National Audubon Society but helps organizations achieve good environmental stewardship. He may be aware of Audubon International’s Golf and the Environment Initiative that partners with the golf industry on improving the nature of the game of golf and serving as a model for change in other business sectors.

He probably doesn’t care that the Lake Tahoe Golf Course, Old Brockway Golf at Kings Beach, the recently remodeled Del Paso Country Club in Sacramento, Northstar in Truckee, Alta Sierra in Grass Valley, Timber Pines in Roseville and the Truckee courses (Tahoe Donner Coyote Moon and Timber Creek) have garnered “sanctuary” status, meaning they practice environmentally safe course stewardship. For that matter, Granite Bay, Old Greenwood in Truckee and the Savannah course at Stevenson Ranch near Merced have gained Audubon International’s “signature” status, which means their environmental practices are good for the surroundings and local wildlife.

“Generally, yes, the golf industry is trying to use less fertilizers and pesticides, but is there anything mandating that?” asks Allayaud. Indeed, there seems to be little data about the actual impact.

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