Golf finding a chemical balance

It’s a gorgeous, postcard-worthy morning. You’ve just snaked home a 20-foot putt, watching with delight as your golf ball tracks perfectly through the dew and into the cup.

You reach into the cup thinking all is right with the world … only to recoil at the sight of the foreign object that emerges - a ball and hand dripping with blue-green goo.

Every golfer has experienced this iridescent buzzkill. And the same three thoughts have then occurred to every golfer in rapid succession: What is that stuff? Will my hand disintegrate if I don’t wash it in 30 seconds? And is this entire course, so unnaturally green, one enormous chemical stew?

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John Burns, the superintendent at Augustine Golf Club in Stafford, Va., chuckles at the line of questioning.

“That’s marker dye,” Burns says. “It’s a soybean oil-based product to help you keep track of where you’ve sprayed, so you don’t overlap or miss spots when you’re putting down product. The dye is totally harmless, and the product should be as well. But I don’t disagree that it’s not the best welcome to the golf course. That’s why we try to put down those applications very early in the morning, so players never experience that.”

With more than 30 years of experience in the field, Burns is a guy you want on the other end of a sprayer. He’s not a “nozzlehead,” an insider’s term for greenskeepers who tend to overapply.

Burns is what those in the industry would call a steward of the environment, which is why Augustine is one of only 26 courses among the hundreds of facilities in the Virginia/D.C./Maryland region officially certified as a member of Audubon International’s Cooperative Sanctuary Program.

The green movement has found golf. In actuality, certain elements within the golf industry (the USGA, PGA of America and Golf Course Superintendents Association of America) embraced the concept of environmental stewardship well over a decade ago. But the green movement itself didn’t find mainstream America until Al Gore rehashed a half-dozen other documentaries a couple of years ago.

Now, suddenly, it’s keen to be green. And the golf industry, with its vast acreage of manicured turf, is a gleaming emerald bull’s-eye.

“Golf courses are an important contributor to the pesticide problem,” says Jay Feldman, the executive director of the National Campaign Against the Misuse of Pesticides. “Golf courses often have communities that surround them. There’s often runoff. There’s off-target impact caused by drift [applying pesticides loosely or in breezy conditions]. There’s exposure to wildlife and neighbors. There are major concerns about the types of pesticides used on golf courses and the quantities and manner in which they are used.”

Feldman’s assertions prompt the following questions: Do golf courses pose a major environmental hazard? Is there an alternative to conventional pesticide use? If so, is it a viable alternative from both a playability and economic standpoint? Are there systems in place to aid the greening of golf? What are the game’s primary environmental concerns moving forward?

Over the next several days, The Washington Times will address these questions in a series of stories focused on golf and the environment.

As recently as 20 years ago, golf could have been classified as an eco-hazard. Many of the well-established programs and practices that have made the game more environmentally friendly were then nonexistent or in their infancy. And one dangerous class of pesticide was still in its heyday.

“In my mind, the use of organophosphates did more to stigmatize the industry than anything else,” says Stuart Cohen, president of Environmental and Turf Services Inc. in Wheaton - a firm that helps architects, builders and superintendents identify site-specific turf-growing challenges and respond with maintenance solutions that balance environmental sensitivity with economic practicality. “Those are a class of pesticides which are neurotoxins. They were routinely used in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and they definitely had a negative impact on the wildlife. While some of those products are still available, their use in the industry has been severely if not entirely curtailed. I travel extensively in this hemisphere visiting courses, and I haven’t seen a fish or avian kill directly attributable to pesticides in a decade.”

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