For decades, the model for golf course aesthetics has been Augusta National Golf Club. The annual telecast of the Masters has shown a seemingly impossible range of shades of green on the grounds, from the pines to the greens to the fairways.
But what the television doesn’t show is how much it costs to create this Eden. As course owners and greens committees around the country have tried to emulate what they thought was the ideal golf experience, course superintendents wound up spending more and more on water, fertilizer and labor to attain a certain color for their courses, as if they were painting a room.
Until recently, that cost was acceptable in the era of bigger clubhouses and other extras like contiguous cart paths from the 1st tee to the 18th green. Especially since golfers were willing to pay for it.
But in the current economic climate, the maintenance of lush, pristinely manicured 7,500-yard layouts has become less sustainable. In addition, increasingly restrictive water regulations in much of the country and the growing awareness of golf’s environmental impact have made Augusta's model even further out of reach.
All these layers atop the basic golf experience have helped raise green fees, initiation fees and dues. Now, as golfers are unwilling to open their wallets as much, facilities are bound to start unpeeling those layers, so courses will look less green, less meticulous around the edges and a lot less soft.
“If there hadn’t been an economic downturn, we would not have seen an end to the chase for longer courses,” says Todd Eckenrode, one of the younger architects already in the business of retrofitting existing layouts to use fewer resources. “But now people are looking at golf courses differently and realize there is nothing wrong with 6,500 yards if it means 10 percent savings to build, a lot less to maintain and faster to play.”
While a direct correlation exists between the length of a course and maintenance cost, other design elements, largely developed over the past couple of decades, have added to the bill.
Two examples are multiple tee boxes and cart paths. It takes a lot of time to hand-mow six tee boxes every day. And in addition to the significant cost of installing paths, modern architects have had to go to extreme lengths to hide them, routing them well away from the fairway and constructing mounds to keep them out of view. That’s a lot of extra turf that has to be maintained.
