“The public conversation about golf and sustainability over the last 20 years has been much more on the negative side,” admitted Jonathan Smith, the founder of the GEO Foundation for Sustainable Golf, which sits less than an hour from the Scottish capital of Edinburgh. Meanwhile, mighty expansions to existing championship courses to combat the modern game’s big-hitters, the slurping of vast reserves of water, chemicals sprayed here and there and the general jet-setting demanded by the global tours, gives golf a carbon footprint that would have Extinction Rebellion activists blockading the R&A’s Spring Meeting. Major developments on sensitive land – I’m not mentioning any Trumps here – have brought the kind of grim coverage you’d get if you hosted a soiree in a Downing Street garden. The game’s green credentials have come under significant scrutiny in recent years. Rather, it’s the bedrock upon which golf is trying to build, well, a sustainable future. The term ‘sustainability’ may crop up everywhere these days but it’s far from a buzzword. The wider, more pressing debates, of course, cannot be ignored.
Talk to some players and they’ll think golf’s green issues revolve around pitch marks, dodgy pin positions and stimp readings.
Let’s face it, we tend to recycle the same old rubbish every time we step on to the course. When it comes to environmentally friendly golf, those of us who are enthusiastically incompetent at this grand game are well ahead of the curve.
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