From the Greens
Belas Clube Campo - An Amazing golf course
Streamsong Golf Course, beautiful view
Carnthousie Golf Course, USA
GolfPlus
OCTOBER
2018
49
rather than relying on sources
involving long haulage only for
enhancing visual appeal. Such
sources (e.g. white sand) in any case,
have ¿ nite capacity in which is likely
to deplete soon. Use of potable water
for irrigation is perhaps the biggest
challenge for sustainability of golf
courses and could become a
À ashpoint as water wars are being
predicted in the near future. A study
by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in
2008 suggested that golf clubs were
using on an average 10 to 15 thousand
cubic metres of water per hectare per
day. Another study in California also
pegged the average requirement of
water in a golf course to be 8000
gallons per day. Both estimates
clearly demonstrate the necessity of
reducing the requirement of water in
golf courses. This can be reduced
considerably by planting drought
resistant grasses like Paspalum which
survive in saline and other poor
quality water and they should also be
planted only in limited areas of
playing importance. Local species of
grass where available should be
planted in other areas as demonstrated
in Chambers Bay (the well
documented brown swathe in the US
Open 2015) or even by the ‘Doob’
fairways of Delhi Golf Club.
Additionally, local vegetation can be
planted in vacant areas, if suitable, to
add to the biodiversity. Irrigating non
essential areas only to create the
colour ‘Green’ may be a poor strategy
as the play of different colours can be
wonderful to look at too. One can see
the example of the famous Stream
song Resort, Stream song, Florida
which doesn’t even grow any À owers
to reduce water usage. The golf
course was built on abandoned mines
with minimalistic design philosophy
and is very highly rated on quality.
The other aspect could be focusing on
the use of recycled water as done
very extensively in an exemplary
manner by Belas Clube de Campos,
Portugal and the DLF Golf Course
closer home also uses treated water.
Usage of Grey water should be
encouraged even though traditionally
many of our older courses (Delhi,
Hyderabad, and Jamshedpur etc)
have been using it for decades.
Creating lakes, ponds and other water
bodies needs to be thought through
after considering availability of
water. The ponds in RCGC are
certainly worthwhile considering the
quantity of rainfall and the need to
collect runoffs. Most other locations
in non coastal cannot afford the luxury
of rain fed water bodies and should
consider not having water bodies
which require to be ¿ lled by pumping
ground water into them. In any case,
construction of large water bodies
requires additional acreage of land and
also damages the local habitat through
arti¿ cial construction. Construction of
underground storage for collecting
runoffs from excessive rainfall or
irrigation may be however bene¿ cial
provided the ¿ nances permit. Creating
new land features or À attening the
existing ones require humongous
movement of material from one place
to another and destroys the habitat of
living beings at both places. No
amount of arti¿ cial creation of another
habitat can generate the living beings
again. The construction (aided by
design ) must avoid frequent
movement of dirt and soil to prevent
this destruction of habitat. In addition,
haulage from distant sites will be even
more damaging due to introduction of
alien material apart from adding to
expenses and wasting some material
(adding to the damage) due to losses
in transit. Using native vegetation and
grasses will lead to reduced usage of
chemicals and fertilisers which will be
again bene¿ cial for the environment
and reduce expenses. Similarly,
leaving some trees or shrubs on the
course may be possible provided it
doesn’t interfere too much with
normal play. After all, some gigantic
trees on courses like Royal Melbourne
acquired legendary status. The
primary purpose of a golf course is for
the game to be played well and
providing a picture postcard look is
only a bonus. Finally, with shrinking
land spaces and increasing costs
creation of more 9-hole golf courses is
inevitable. It might be worthwhile to
convert some smaller and not so well
designed 18-hole golf courses (usually
having no practice areas) into 9-hole
complexes with practice areas with or
without 3/6 hole pitch and putt
courses. The shorter golf courses will
not only have lesser environmental
footprint but may also attract more
people into the game by making it
faster and more enjoyable for all. The
golf industry catering to design and
construction would need to be
following a path of sustainability by
limiting environmental damage and
creating
long
term
¿ nancial
advantages. Obviously, there are many
ways to travel on that path as long as
there is willingness to move in that
direction.
Congressional Country Club, USA
GolfPlus
NOVEMBER
2018
49