Conservation

The threat to golf:

The commercial revolution in professional golf with the rise of television money has encouraged the development of courses with fertilised fairways and over-watered greens. This threatens to create in the mind of the public that golf is unecological in its use of water and fertilisers. 

Following the droughts in the mid 90s, even many Fine courses decided to install fairway watering systems and they do usefully give greenkeepers more flexibility. 

Green is the buzz word:

 It did though seem that lush target golf was carrying all before it and the credo “if it isn’t green, it must be dead” pervading golf at many levels. 

A recent visitor to Royal Dornoch asked for his green fee to be returned because he felt the fairways, not being green, must be in bad repair! 

Fine Golf’s ambition

..is to rebalance this dangerous philosophy and give confidence to golfers to support austere greenkeeping at their local clubs. 

Well-managed golf courses cannot be accused of being polluters.  Traditional, austere greenkeeping minimises the need for both pesticides and fungicides and ensures that no pollution occurs from excessive fertiliser use or overwatering. 

The rise in conservation consciousness should help this rebalancing but sometimes the ‘Climate Change Lobby’ promotes ignorant attitudes with - for example, all trees being seen as sacrosanct. 

Heathland ecology is worth fighting for:

The biggest conservation headache on heathland is the invasion of seedling trees which, if not cleared, transform the appearance and nature of the course from open heathland to woodland. 

 This takes place over a long time and, therefore, people live with it and many of our heathland courses are now heavily wooded.  The visionary clubs know that they have to continuously work at heathland regeneration if they are to help keep the ecological balance and stop the heathland features degenerating into woodland and parkland. 

heather is killed by being fertilised: The deciduous leaves of oaks and silver birch in the autumn blow under the heather, mulch down and fertilise.  It is a phenomenon that the Surrey and Berkshire heathland courses are trying to counteract.  Ignorant tree huggers can do much harm to the ecological balance. 

The work being done at two of our finest heathland courses, Hankley Common and Walton Heath, with the regeneration of the heath and the removal of hundreds of trees, leads the way. 

 They have achieved this progressive policy by involving local conservation groups and communicating coherently with their memberships. 

Let us know of examples of conservation on fine courses. Leave us a comment below.