Golf finding a chemical balance

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By Barker Davis

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?

***

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.