Assembly lines are infecting golf courses too. Courses are churned out to "match" their corresponding housing community and various buzzwords distinguish the clones. Architects employ similar visual tricks and course layout bailouts to appease golf's pop culture. Golf's origin in Scotland was defined by it's living and breathing relationship with nature, not by botoxed fairways of the modern golf/resident communities. Moreover, diminishing resources will make these manicured backyards even harder to maintain. Organic growth and sustainable golf courses may be the answer to maintaining value in our inevitable growth. I am suggesting we develop golf with some intelligent foresight where value and convenience means strength and endurance, not a cheap round at your local and disposable golforama.

Courses like Kabi Organic Golf Course & Orchard and Stevinson Ranch Golf Course are beginning to shape the concept of organic golf. Kabi is proud to operate with "fewer pesticides and fertilizers (or none at all), regularly testing water quality, mowing less often and in fewer areas, composting grass clippings, and using reclaimed rainwater. Some greens now provide sanctuary for local wildlife and are replanted with native grasses that require less harmful care. These simple changes can be drastically effective. Courses watered with effluent from wastewater treatment facilities, for example, which also maintain vegetative buffer zones, will actually help purify the processed wastewater of salts, nitrogen, and phosphorous before it enters waterways." Stevinson Ranch is an Audubon International Signature course, adhering to environmental excellence. Stevinson Ranch is able to sustain their fairways and 4.5 Star Golf Digest rating. A proven example of conscious golf development is Olympia Fields Country Club, built in 1915 just south of Chicago to offer relief from industrial urban life. Some of the country’s earliest golf courses actually helped prevent worse sprawl later on.  

I am not opposed to growth. I just hope for productive growth that will provide my children with a chance to play a game that has kept its original roots.