Some sizeable blame should be borne by the R&A themselves for the current level of unsustainably in our game


Whilst I am in full agreement with the rational behind the R&A’s championing of sustainable golf courses I have to say that some sizeable blame should be borne by themselves for the current level of unsustainably in our game. I highlight two examples of this:


a)Their inability, over the past 20 years, to control the development of both ball and club that allows most of our older courses to be rendered ‘drive and flick’ courses by even a mid-range handicapper. As a result, newly constructed courses are using up larger areas of land to ensure par is protected. This, in turn, has a negative impact on running costs and the environment. Meanwhile, our older clubs are having to undertake major modernisation via extension and rebunkering, which has similar fiscal and environmental negatives to the new builds.


b)As the commissioners of a study in the late eighties that estimated the UK required a further 700 courses to future demand. This report fuelled a headlong development rush to meet this ‘estimation’ that has, in turn, led the game to be accessible to most but financially unstainable to many 'new build' operators. I hazard a guess that many of these new developments are not very far up the R&A’s sustainable ladder.


by Jim Arthur in the late seventies to highlight the frailty of playing the game on colour, god bless him. It also coincided with just about everyone in the nation being able to afford a colour TV! The hard fact is that it is greenkeepers who create the conditions that favour Poa annua. Okay, maybe past committees of many clubs have a large portion of blame to take as well, but the fact remains that the buck, whichever way it is travelling, stops with the Course Manager/Head Greenkeeper.


Blame Culture


As I am on the subject of blame, not a culture I normally like to promote, however I feel that some responsibility for the current lack of ‘business’ sustainability being experienced by our clubs rest firmly on the shoulders of the R&A.


While on the point of responsibility I also noted that the R&A expects the champions of ‘sustainability’ at golf clubs to be the Course Manager/Head Greenkeeper. Not the Club Manager or Board, but you!


Buck up your ideas


Okay, now back to that buck passing. Let’s say you have a firm grip on the buck; what are you going to do about it? Well, according to the powers that be (the R&A, our National golf bodies, BIGGA and the ‘gingerbread men’!), you should be managing for sustainability. And, according to the R&A’s analogy that means climbing “The Ladder Of Sustainability” (see the video at www.bestcourseforgolf.org).


In turf terms this means that thatch ridden Poa infested bogs are on the bottom rung with fine fescues looking down from the top rung. As you ascend the ladder I imagine you pass something


like well managed annual meadow grass, Poa annua/bent (UK majority), bent/Poa annua, bent, bent/fescue, fescue/bent and finally pure fescue (at this point you find out that you are tending one of God’s own courses). For those of you managing Creeping Bent Grass, I remember Steve Issacs saying at the South West BIGGA seminar that clean Creeping Bent was somewhere in the middle of the sustainability ladder.


By the way if you want to see greens at the top of the ‘playing condition’ ladder take a look at Phil Chiverton’s Creeping Bent surfaces at The Grove, and at any time of the year.


This note leads me on to a point I would like to see strengthen in the promoting of sustainable golf, and that is its relationship to playability or, should I say, quality of playing surfaces. It does appear to me that the presumption is that a bent/fescue sward will, by definition, provide a superior year round playing surface ahead of all others. I would like to see more hard facts on the year round playing quality of our various turf stands, cost of maintaining these surfaces and the income streams they generate. Also, more relevant and, dare I say, honest technical information on the greens in that much pressurised ‘transitional’ period from Poa annua to Bent. For it is at this point that the sustainability game has more snakes than ladders.


Rules of the Game


Before you take your first roll of the dice you had better understand the rules. The main one to be aware of is that you can go down as well as up in this game; yes, there are snakes as well a ladders. As I have played this game a number of times before (although it wasn’t labelled ‘sustainability’ at the time, it was, however, often called ‘Arthuritis’) I am going to make the game easier for you. The snakes encountered come in the following guises:


1)Don’t play Monopoly, this is snakes and ladders. (Get everyone on your side and every factor in your favour, this is a team game).


2)Don’t provide chip and run golf when the course is designed for Florida. (Align agronomic practices to strategic business policy).


3)Not having a coordinated long term 47


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