Is climate change the reason Maidstone needs to water fairways?
The Maidstone Club is one of America’s oldest and best golf courses. Designed in 1922 by Willie Park, the club is part of the East Hampton community in New York.
The club is so old and has stuck to tradition - it actually does not have irrigation for its fairways. It only has irrigation for its greens and tees. The water they’ve been using has been groundwater they pump for irrigation. The course superintendent, Robert Williams, wants to change that. He would like to take water from the neighboring Hook Pond - a pond that belongs to East Hampton.
Tom Calvin, who lives in the nearby town of Sag Harbor, is a writer covering golf for several publications, including the New York Times and Golf Magazine. He’s also writing a column for Hamptons.com that appears every two weeks. This week’s column covers the story of Maidstone attempting to get permission to take water from Hook Pond to water its fairways. Calvin discusses the reasons behind Maidstone’s desire to water its fairways.
Among the aspects that has made the Maidstone Club unique is that it has never irrigated its fairways. Excellent management of the course coupled with regular rainfall and the dampness associated with a course being right on the Atlantic Ocean has meant that in the past Maidstone didn’t have to be irrigated. According to club officials, that combination is no longer sufficient to keep the course as challenging and beautiful as it is. The culprit is climate change.
There are some curious statements made in that paragraph. Excellent management of the course has little to do with the need to irrigate fairways - either it’s too dry for grass to grow or not. Regular rainfall - whatever that means - is a no-brainer. Dampness associated with a course being right on the Atlantic Ocean seems a bit odd - there are a lot of golf courses right on oceans and, to my knowledge, almost all of them have irrigation.
I also am curious why club officials would think that irrigating fairways would have anything to do with the challenge of the golf course. Maidstone is designed to play as a links golf course - in other words, firm and fast. Maidstone, being a private course, also doesn’t have near the wear and tear on its fairways of a public course - meaning that irrigation to regenerate grass in divots is not a high priority. Maidstone hasn’t watered its fairways since the beginning and I seriously doubt they would go through this trouble for ascetic reasons.
Calvin’s assertion that climate change is the reason is beyond bizarre. (I’m assuming that Calvin, not the unnamed “club officials”, is saying climate change is at fault.)
An interesting look at the northeast’s climate data from the National Climactic Data Center tells us a slightly different story about rainfall in the northeast - it’s increasing on a decade basis. 0.06 inches per decade to be exact. Not a lot - but increasing none the less.
The fact of the matter is that climate change has nothing to do with the desire for Maidstone’s irrigation request. An article from April that appeared in the East Hampton Star gives us more indication into why the club is looking to irrigate.
“We want to create a better course year round,” Mr. Williams said. “Using the pond was seen as the most attractive option.”
…
Mr. Williams said it was important to control the irrigation of the fairways so as not to damage the Maidstone’s links character. “A links course should be firm and fast. It’s up to who’s putting water on; just enough water to keep the grass from dying or going dormant. You can overwater, a bad thing. It could change the nature of the course,” Mr. Williams said.
This certainly paints a different picture. The reason they’re putting irrigation in is to avoid costly and time consuming reseeding and hand watering of areas of grass that die at the end of the season. With the ability to irrigate, Williams can keep the grass from going dormant or dieing - allowing him to focus on other aspects of the golf course and keep the course in playable (i.e. no GIR for seeded areas) condition for longer periods of time. Certainly a more logical and sound reasoning for the desire to do what the vast majority of golf courses in the country do - water their fairways.
