GolfStinks

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What Animals are Lurking on your Golf Course?

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Turkeys roaming the fairway at Woodhaven Country Club, CT (Photo by Greg D’Andrea)

This past weekend, I was playing a local 9-hole golf course and was held-up on the third tee because of a flock of turkeys in the fairway (see photo above). This is why I love golf – because it’s out in nature and not some fenced-in field somewhere.

And fall is a good time to spy creatures on the course as many are out and about foraging. Earlier this year, I saw a few deer in the fairway during one round, but they were too fast for me to get a photo.

Besides the obvious birds (including hawks, geese, ducks, swans, cranes, roadrunners, etc.) and many deer and squirrels, I’ve also seen foxes; rabbits; alligators (on Hilton Head Island, SC); snakes (on multiple occasions); chipmunks; coatimundi (on a course in Mexico); lizards; frogs; bison; turtles; and even some cool fish (including a koi-stocked pond on one course). I’ve also seen a scorpion stinger stuck into a course worker’s boot (though I didn’t see the actual scorpion).

Coatimundi just off the cart path - the Golf Club at Moon Palace, Mexico
Coatimundi just off the cart path – the Golf Club at Moon Palace, Mexico (Photo by Greg D’Andrea)

What I have not seen is Bigfoot – though I’m still holding out hope (someone in the Pacific Northwest must have seen a squatch on the course??).

bigfoot stole my golf ball
I think Bigfoot just stole my golf ball!

Anyway, we’ve started our own photo collection of animals on golf courses on our Pinterest page – check out the board: Creatures on the Course (see below).

Follow GolfStinks’s board Creatures on the Course on Pinterest.

So, what creatures have you seen on your local course – anything cool, scary or interesting? Let us know in the comments!

Wildlife On The Golf Course

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Gators sunbathing in the fairway on Hilton Head, SC
Gators sunbathing just off the fairway on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina (Photo by Greg D’Andrea)

I’m an animal lover.  And I don’t mean just your everyday domesticated house pets, but all animals and wildlife.  I can stare at the groundhog family outside my office window for who knows how long.  Well, long enough to get nothing accomplished for a significant amount of time.  But I can’t help myself, I just find wildlife interesting.  This is another thing that gets me excited about going golfing – spending some time out in nature.

When I have the opportunity to play a course that’s far away from a city and carved out of the woods, besides just the beautiful New England countryside, the chance to see a good amount of the local wildlife is there as well.  This comes to mind thanks to a quick nine-hole round I played this past Sunday morning with one of my kids.  On one hole, we had a deer standing in the middle of the fairway that seemed to be in no hurry to leave once we pulled our cart up.  It wasn’t until I continued to pull the cart up, getting to within about 40 yards, before it ran up a hill and out of sight.  On the green of the very next hole, a red-tailed hawk flew within 15 feet of us as we putted out.

Now deer and birds of prey may be relatively common, but it’s a bit uncommon for a deer to let you get that close.  On one occasion, while playing in an old golf league, we had two deer working their way down a fairway toward my foursome standing on the green.  They didn’t turn away until one of us teed off.  Or how about the occasional fox?  There’s been a couple of times where a fox has run across a neighboring fairway.

But it’s been in our travels that we’ve come across some other creatures we won’t normally find here in CT.  For instance, stinky golfer Greg tells a story of playing a course in the southwest where one of the employees ventured into the desert area bordering the rough to collect some balls.  Greg noticed the guy was wearing a pair of boots.  Why?  Well, when he came out of the brush, several stingers from the tails of scorpions were sticking out of the guy’s boots.  Lesson…when playing a desert course, if your ball goes into the brush, leave it there.

One of my favorite experiences though was playing down in Hilton Head, SC.  This was my first time sharing the course with alligators.  People had told us if we leave them alone, then they’ll leave us alone.  This was certainly the case, but that didn’t make it any easier when my approach landed only fifteen feet away from one!

Anyway, the wildlife is just another part of the all-around experience of the sport that keeps me coming back.  I’ve seen deer and all the other furry woodland creatures.  I’ve chipped on while being only fifteen feet away from an alligator.  I’ve caught a few snakes.  I’ve even seen someone hit a duck from about 200 yards!  As long as I never end up on one of those “When Animals Attack” shows, then it’s always going to be one of my favorite parts of the game.

Swing ’til you’re happy!

The Gluttony of Golf

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Did we overdo it with the number of courses? (photo by Gabriel S. Delgado C. / CC BY 2.0)
Is this word overstuffed with golf courses? (photo by
Gabriel S. Delgado C. / CC BY 2.0)

Do you have any idea how many golf courses are in the United States? You can find out easily – just conduct a simple search on our courses and golfers page.

If you only select “USA” as your country and hit search, you will get 725 pages worth of courses with 25 courses per page. Some quick math will tell you that adds up to 18,125 golf courses in the US.

Do you have any idea how big that number is? Well, let me help put it in perspective for you: How long will you drive down the main drag of any city or town in America before you pass a McDonlad’s? Not very long, right? Well, there are only 12,804 Mickey D’s in the United States.

Does that help you wrap your head around 18 thousand f’ing golf courses? Let me ask you something else: What the hell is this country doing with 18,000 golf courses? There’s only 50 states for goodness sake! That’s nearly 400 courses per state! I can understand a state the size of Texas having hundreds of courses (actually has 940), but why does my pea-sized home state of Connecticut have hundreds (199 to be exact)?

The way I see it, having this many golf courses poses a couple problems: First, there’s the negative environmental impact. In the U.S. (which is home to more than half the world’s courses), golf is played on nearly 2 million acres of land. That land requires more than 2 billion* gallons of water daily to be kept green. In addition, vast tracts of natural habitats are being displaced.

In Wyoming in 2004, for example, bald eagles in the region were driven from their nests to accommodate a new golf course just outside of Jackson Hole – an area already established as a golfing mecca.

But giving the middle finger to wildlife is only part of golf’s environmental problem – every year, millions of pounds of pesticides are used on courses in the US. And there’s runoff of those chemicals into our rivers and streams – water that will eventually contaminate wildlife, plant life, and human life.

If this wasn’t bad enough – let’s look at the second problem I have with America’s overabundance of golf courses: It simply isn’t good for the game. The reality is (to quote a post I wrote over a year ago) “every year since 2006, more golf courses have closed in the U.S. than have opened.”

We over-did-it. A decade ago, new courses were springing up everywhere. Now, they’re closing – And struggling private courses are opening their doors to the public in an effort to stay afloat.

Cost-saving measures include squeezing in as many tee-times as possible and trimming staff (course rangers in particular). Both of the aforementioned steps have contributed to slow play (a turn-off for both new and established golfers alike).

Look, I love golf (if you’ve read this blog before, I think it’s obvious) – but don’t you think 18,000 courses is spreading this game a little thin? In this post-Tiger era (and let’s face it, it’s definitley post-Tiger), interest in the game has waned somewhat – we can no longer afford to maintain (successfully anyway) all these tracts of land.

Perhaps a small downsize would be good for golf. Lord knows if our gluttony continues…”Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” – Proverbs 23:20-21.

*Corrected Figure (this post originally stated 4 billion gallons of water per day).

Golf and the Environment…Enough Already!

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autumn-194834_1280Dear golfers of the world,

Haven’t we heard enough about eco-this and eco-that? The tree-huggers already have a day dedicated to the well-being of the planet: Earth Day…and it was last Friday – I think we’re good till next year, no?

It’s bad enough Al Gore is running around like Chicken Little yelling the sky is falling, but now the “green” movement is encroaching on our golf games to boot.

First the environmentalists complained that golf courses messed up the local wildlife (big deal – it’s not like the golf industry is BP). Then they observed that it takes a ton of water to keep a course green…not to mention a ton of chemicals (so there’s a little chemical run-off – who drinks out of a stream anymore anyway)? I mean, what’s next – outrage over the billions and billions of lost golf balls littering the planet? The gas used in our carts? The trees chopped to accommodate an additional 18 holes?

Don’t even get me started on all the “eco-golf” websites out there: Places like Turfhugger, Golf & Environment and…of all sites to jump on the bandwagon; Golf Stinks…with posts HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE – about…yep, you guessed it…Golf and the freaking environment. When will it end?

Well, it appears no time soon. If the aforementioned wasn’t eco-nauseous enough, the hippies over at Golf Refugees have developed “a set of environmental golf rules.” Apparently, they feel they have the cojones large enough to petition the the USGA and R&A to alter the Rules of Golf to accommodate their new eco-rules – what silliness!

I’m so sick of hearing that golf is made up of a bunch of rich fat cats that don’t care about the environmental impacts of the game they love. I say the exact opposite is true: We’ve taken what was once useless wilderness and turned it into something for everyone to use (well, that is…everyone that has the prim and properness to wear chinos and a collared shirt; frivolously spend on the latest golf balls, shoes and gloves; fork over a small fortune on greens fees; spend hundreds – in some cases thousands – on a decent set of golf clubs; and have a car to put it all in…preferably something with 8 cylinders that comfortably fits 7).

So please don’t let all this eco-hype fool you. Golf courses are doing nothing wrong and there’s no such thing as global warming. Just go about your business as usual and I hope to see you all at your local course this weekend (just ignore those yellow “caution pesticide application” signs on each tee-box – they’re totally hog wash)!

Sincerely,
The Traditional Golf Industry

Author’s Note: Unless your head’s completely up your ass, you’ve realized this post is nothing but satire. That being said, it’s time the powers that be in the golf industry get their heads out of their asses.

If we want our kids and our grand kids to enjoy this game, we need to make some changes ASAP. The guys over at Golf Refugees are on to something with their eco-rules – it’s a lofty goal, but a necessary one. And if we can’t change the rules immediately, how about an eco-tournament on the pro-tour? Just one tour stop a year where there’s an eco-centric theme (perhaps it’s played on a course that doesn’t use pesticides).

Many people point to golf as a sport that’s detrimental to the environment. Let’s change that. God knows, this game can use all the help it can get.

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