World Golf Day!

Golf is believed to have originated in 15th-century Scotland but has become a widespread popular pastime even in the modern day. Golf as a sport can be fun to learn and play and seem a necessary part of any town, but, in reality, golf courses serve a very limited purpose. According to Abbie Richard, a science communicator at Wagenin Univrsity in the Netherlands, “Golf celebrates the wastage of resources and degradation of nature for the benefit of the select few who can afford it.” In simple terms, golf poses a large ecological threat to everyone while only being enjoyed by a small percentage of the population wealthy enough to play.

First, the construction of golf courses fundamentally requires environmental destruction and restructuring, clearing away acres of biodiversity to be paved over with turf and artificial ponds. Additionally, approximately 9 billion liters of water are wasted every year in the US simply to maintain the appearance of golf courses. This is a gross misuse of land space that could be used for anything from parks to increased affordable housing, which is instead turned into an oversized board game for wealthy suburbanites. But, these courses provide even further environmental damage than their construction; the maintenance of their pristine lawns damages ecosystems both on land and in the oceans and waterways around them, due to their large use of pesticides and herbicides.

When golf courses maintain their grass with large quantities of pesticides, these chemicals are washed away with the next rain (or the next sprinkler cycle) and end up in water ways like rivers and groundwater, eventually making their way to the ocean, causing ocean eutrophication and harmful algal blooms that choke out native wildlife. Additionally, when these pesticides make their way into groundwater (which a large percentage of Americans use as their main source of water) they cause health issues and act as carcinogens, harming the populations around the courses themselves. Overall, while golf should still be enjoyed and accessible to all, the majority of our current golf courses only serve to increase the divides in sport accessibility, waste resources and land, and damage our ecosystems. What we need are less golf courses that are accessible to more people, not more golf courses designated for the select few.