COVER STORY: The Carbon-Zero Course

To get to sustainability, golf courses will need to look different. And to do so, the modern course will need to take a cue from its past.

Perhaps courses like St. Andrews will dictate the standard for how the future golf course should be modeled.

“Look at the true links land philosophy of how a course can be managed, or should be managed, say Andrew Staples, president of the Phoenix-based Golf Resource Group. “You walk through the Old Course at St. Andrews and it looks like a goat ranch. But one will never argue how great that course plays regardless of the time of year or how much rainfall has taken place.”
 
Staples argues that the course of the future needs to adapt to the time of year and what the weather provides. It’ll be a return of the golf course back into a more dynamic living organism with more native areas and other areas going off color at various times of the year, instead of the exact same made-for-TV product year round, he says.

If this philosophy is adopted by the industry, then it relieves the pressure on the superintendent to maintain a certain aesthetic. Instead, he will have the freedom to pursue what he does best.

This doesn’t mean it will be an easy transition and it’ll take time to change attitudes, Staples concedes. “We’re not there yet,” he says. “But the golf course of the future will have more of an awareness of the environmental role it plays and players will acknowledge that and understand, maybe even embrace it.”