Greens are to become browner in a drive to make golf kinder to the environment. In a revolutionary move, the rulers of golf are telling courses around the world to become more environmentally friendly, in order to head off criticism and cope with global warming.
The 250-year-old Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, which governs golf outside the US and Mexico, wants courses to use much less water and drought-tolerant grasses as the climate changes. It is also urging them to cut out pesticides and to put recycled glass instead of sand in their bunkers. The campaign - to which some 2,000 courses in 100 countries have already signed up - aims to "improve golf's image as a polluter and abuser of vast tracts of countryside" in response to charges by environmentalists that it wastes resources, poisons land and water, and destroys priceless wildlife habitats.
Golf has much the greatest impact on the land of any sport. The world's 25,000 golf courses - a tenth of them in Britain - cover an area the size of Belgium. Their critics say that they use up to seven times as much pesticide per acre as farmland, and that they can soak up enough water to supply a small town. And they add that the rapid expansion of golf, particularly in the Third World, has ruined ecosystems and thrown people off their land. "Golf has acquired the status of a four-letter word because of the havoc it has wrought across the globe", said one Indian critic, Mario Rodrigues.
The Global Anti-Golf Movement has been pushing for 13 years to stop any more courses being built and to have existing ones "converted to public parks". And the underground Anarchist Golfing Association destroyed GM grass worth $300,000 being developed for greens.
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http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1168223.ece
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