Loop Links, no. 4
Rewilding... or wilding out?
A few years ago, right after I had moved back to Ann Arbor, there was a contentious debate over a housing project in the city. Some residents didn’t like the traffic headaches it would cause, while others advocated for the dire need for more housing in the city, while yet others supported more housing in the city, but didn’t think there were enough affordable housing units in the plan. Everyone had a strong opinion, except for me, maybe. But then the University of Michigan Golf Course weighed in. They threatened to sue over the project, which would be its new neighbor, saying that the plan did not account for the runoff waste from the site that would spill over onto the golf course.
The course’s foray into the battle piqued my interest, as did a response from the city council member that I had voted for. She said that if it was up to her, the entire golf course would be bulldozed and turned into housing. Comedic value aside, this is property of the university that props up the entire town that we are talking about, after all, this was the first time that a course I cared about, “my course” even, was in the spotlight of golf course critics. People who hated golf, your Malcolm Gladwells of the world, were always sort of an abstract idea to me. They had never made any threats, realistic or not, against a course that I frequented. But my city council member, who lost my vote that day, finally made it personal.
I’m still working on some stuff for more of a proper edition of Loop Links, and wasn’t planning on having one this week, but as The Dude would say, “new sh*t has come to light, man.” Namely, this article from the New York Times from this morning on the “rewilding” of closed golf courses. Apologies to those behind the paywall, but this article was gifted to me.
I won’t attempt to summarize the article here, although for a New York Times article written by a non-golfer, I think it is quite fair (although major bummer for not mentioning the former Little Traverse Bay golf course). Against my better judgment, and already knowing what I would see there, I dipped my toe into the comments section to see what the temperature was. For me, that sort of inspired these thoughts.
I’ve long had reservations about the sustainability of golf, and access to golf also remains an important topic to me. I would like to think that I am well-read on the topic, or well-listened in the case of podcasts, but look, I won’t pretend that there aren’t many people more qualified than I am to talk about some of the issues brought up in the article. I can only speak from my perspective, and I see some threats to golf that still aren’t fully being addressed.
The Enemy Within
Ok, that’s a little harsh. I certainly see a battle within the golf industry itself, but there aren’t really any enemies here. Maybe some ideas are enemies, but certainly not people. We all love golf. We just see different ways of approaching it. What I am talking about is sustainable golf, as opposed to what I often see referred to as “championship golf”, or maybe luxury golf. It’s the Augusta-fication of golf, if you will, that took place between essentially the end World War II and at least through the late 90’s.
The golf boom after WWII placed an emphasis on conditioning, with a manicured look on a golf course winning the day. Golf sprouted up in areas like Palm Springs and Phoenix, among other unlikely places for the game to exist. Luxury and exclusivity were considered feathers in the cap of any club. It wasn’t until around the 2000s that we really saw a pendulum shift in the game, likely caused by various bubble bursts and the recession, and a realization that perhaps the game had grown too large, too quickly, and become too extravagant. A new emphasis on sustainable maintenance practices, lower costs, fewer new courses being constructed, and existing courses being renovated to resemble the architecture of its past were suddenly a part of the landscape.
It hasn’t shifted all of the way, though. Too many golfers still rate a course based on how fast the greens roll. Too many courses still think the ideal is to provide a “championship test”, as opposed to being a responsible steward and an asset to its community. Golf should resemble it’s environment, and provide a sanctuary for native plant and animal life. Excessive water and pesticide usage, common perceptions of the non-golfing public of the game’s negative environmental impact, can’t just be wrong in some cases. They need to be wrong in all cases.
This might be, probably is, a simplification of the debate over sustainability in golf. The point, however, is that the golf industry and those playing golf need to be on a unified front here. Because let me tell you, some folks don’t know the first thing about the sport, but are determined that they won’t quit until every single golf course is closed.
A Good Walk… Nothing Spoiled
As the article comments made me aware, or reminded me, more realistically, is that non-golfers still view it as an elitist game, a waste of green space, and a waste of water. For all intents and purposes, golf in the eyes of America is stuck in the 1980s. Malcolm Gladwell did no favors with his take on golf in LA, a very specific view on ultra-private, tax-incentivized golf in an area with limited green space, which he naively extrapolated to apply to all golf everywhere in the country. He helped create an army of anti-golfers who won’t be happy unless every golf course is turned into green space.
That idea is an illusion. We’ve seen plenty of courses close since the turn of the century, especially in Michigan, and very few turn into green space. There were 28, according to the Times, between 2010 and 2022. As the article details, what happens more often is that the land gets paved over, as happened to the 36-hole New Hampshire facility which was turned into a Target distribution center. More frequently the land turns into housing, as was nearly the case for one of the green spaces featured, the former Ocean Meadows in Santa Barbara, before the 2008 recession derailed that plan.
Let’s be clear, in some situations where housing is limited, turning a golf course into housing might be a reasonable idea. But that doesn’t align with what we have actually seen when a course closes, where luxury housing usually moves in.
The Gladwell effect also lumps all of golf into an elitist, gated affair, ignoring the reality of most golfers who live for public golf. So many of these spaces offer the bulk of exercise that many people get in their lives, and the connections they make with the community at these clubs. Closing public courses eliminates those opportunities, in a time of loneliness and divisiveness when frankly we need those connections now more than ever.
There are also positives of golf courses that are not being considered. A modern trend has been building golf on top of superfund sites, landfills, and other pieces of land that were otherwise “dead”, helping turn them once again into usable sites, and in some cases, bringing them back to life. And then there is the simple fact that without the existence of a previous golf course, there likely wouldn’t be green space there to “rewild”. It would have been paved over and developed long ago.
Lastly, as noted in the article, turning closed courses into green space requires money. Like millions. The land needs to be purchased, rehabilitated, and maintained, which can cost as much or more than it would to simply build a new golf course there. The Santa Monica site featured in the NYT article, as I mentioned above, was sold for $7 million before being donated to UC Santa Barbara, and then required $16 million in grant money to be restored. The Little Traverse Conservancy, more locally, was made possible by the Offield family, whose wealth derived from the Wrigley legacy. Funding these green space rehabilitations, while entirely the preferred outcome of any closed golf course space, is simply a pipe dream for anyone who thinks this will be the norm or is a reasonable expectation for every golf course in America.
So that’s where I find myself. I’m firmly in the shrink-the-game camp, believing that golf needs to be sustainable from a maintenance perspective, and needs to be as accessible as possible both to golfers and to the general public as a green space. If that ever becomes the overwhelming norm for the game, I think we could then, in a unified voice, tell the Malcolm Gladwell-ites in the comment sections to take a seat.
I'm glad you brought up the point on interacting with the community. Many of my non-golfer friends find it downright bizarre that I regularly spend four hours with one or more strangers for most of my rounds of golf. It wasn't always that weird to have conversations with strangers!