Let’s look at the ten tenants:

1. Create courses on sites that will sustain golf with a minimum disturbance to and maximum enhancement of natural ecosystems, and/or rehabilitate degraded landscapes and environments.
2. Move earth more efficiently to create courses that fit their sites and respect the natural characteristics of the terrain.
3. Design and construct courses with ongoing operations and future maintenance and sustainability in mind.
4. Protect native flora and fauna.
5. Protect and enhance wildlife habitat and other sensitive environmental areas while providing active corridors for species diversity.
6. Minimize clearing of trees and other native vegetation and, where possible, revegetate with indigenous plants from the site.
7. Create courses that use less water, pesticides, and fertilizers than traditional courses.
8. Protect, conserve, and improve water quality and resources by incorporating wetlands, turfgrass, and other natural site features to clean and filter water.
9. Maximize the effectiveness of available water through the use of drought-tolerant grass species; and specify soil amendments that lead to water conservation, and, where applicable, absorb properly-treated effluent.
10. Employ new technologies wherever and whenever feasible, that will further these goals.

I’m in total agreement that we need to be looking for ways to “green” golf – it has several benefits that Geoff Shackelford’s recent Golfdom article, “Time for Change”, points out. I even have an entire section dedicated on this website to environmental issues with regards to golf.

However, I’m a little skeptical when it comes to top ten lists and proclamations by architects for a couple of reasons. First, I just don’t see an architect turning down a job because it violates one of these tenants – especially in the current economic climate. Second, there is a lot of hyperbole in these tenants that, while certainly they should be followed, make sense from a financial standpoint. Let’s go one by one.

Create courses on sites that will sustain golf with a minimum disturbance to and maximum enhancement of natural ecosystems, and/or rehabilitate degraded landscapes and environments.

The idea of minimal disturbance has been used by every golf course architect in the world. All of them claim to disturb the minimum amount of land. Of course my definition and your definition of minimal is totally subjective. To a developer building a golf course it’s all about yield for the subidivision, since nearly every new golf course is built with housing these days. (Well, before residential development ceased…) Maximum enhancement of natural ecosystems is far too ambiguous for me to understand. Obviously building golf courses on otherwise degraded environments is going to be a positive.

Move earth more efficiently to create courses that fit their sites and respect the natural characteristics of the terrain.

This is actually very similar to the first tenant. Again, few architects actually preserve the natural characteristics of the terrain. On many sites this just isn’t feasible – which means RTJ II will have to turn projects down if he actually intends to be a true convert. Again, though, this is very ambiguous.

Design and construct courses with ongoing operations and future maintenance and sustainability in mind.

Okay, now we’re getting into something here. Again, pretty ambiguous, though. If a golf course architect, especially one of RTJ II’s experience, is not designing a course with ongoing operations (I’ll let you define that for yourself…), then he hasn’t been doing his job. I wonder if this means going to single, or at most, double row irrigation and not irrigating rough – ever. Or, how about irrigation of greens and tees only? Now that’s keeping sustainability in mind. But what developer is going to accept this? What GOLFER is going to accept this? This would have been a real good one for a little more detail on what sustainability means.

Protect native flora and fauna.

This one definitely wins the most ambiguous award. How do you protect native flora and fauna when you’re disturbing between 80 and 150 acres building a golf course? What’s the point? What if it doesn’t deserve protection? When is it protected and when does it not get protection?

Protect and enhance wildlife habitat and other sensitive environmental areas while providing active corridors for species diversity.

Active corridors for species diversity? What in the world is that? I could understand passive corridors for species diversity because that would essentially mean you leave it alone. (If you’re not familiar with the terms “active” and “passive” when it comes to landscape architecture speak, “passive” means you don’t touch it, “active” means you build something. Think of it like this – 30 acres of passive parkland hasn’t been disturbed by man. 30 acres of active parkland means there are 15 soccer fields and 500 parking spaces on it.) Sensitive environmental areas are already required to be protected by law. I wonder if this means no more stream buffer disturbance or wetland filling on any RTJ II courses?

Minimize clearing of trees and other native vegetation and, where possible, revegetate with indigenous plants from the site.

This is very similar to number 4, except we’re leaving out fauna this time.

Create courses that use less water, pesticides, and fertilizers than traditional courses.

This is very similar to number 3, except we’ve gotten a little more specific. However, a benchmark would be useful here. What are “traditional courses” – something designed by RTJ II’s dad? Use of pesticides and fertilizers is dictated by the super, and of course, the golfers using the course.

Protect, conserve, and improve water quality and resources by incorporating wetlands, turfgrass, and other natural site features to clean and filter water.

This is a good one – incorporation of water quality best management practices is an admirable goal. Many places in the US are going to required treatment of runoff and man made wetlands, biofilters, and other types of runoff treatment devices are a great idea.

Maximize the effectiveness of available water through the use of drought-tolerant grass species; and specify soil amendments that lead to water conservation, and, where applicable, absorb properly-treated effluent.

By far the most detailed of RTJ II’s tenants, this one is also a very good one.

Employ new technologies wherever and whenever feasible, that will further these goals.

Ambiguous at best, I think they were stretching to come up with number 10 and this was thrown in. Obviously you’re going to use the most effective “technology” is you’re employing these goals. They may be new, or they may be old, but they’re likely to be expensive. So, it’s going to come down to whether or not an owner is willing to pay for this.

With the green market catching on, this kind of press release is good public relations. It allows them to provide clients, environmentalists and concerned citizens with tangible evidence of how “green” they are. It’s preemptive too – as land development of any type is more and more challenged by citizens through the approval process (i.e. rezonings, etc.), those architects who can provide this kind of feel good PR are more likely to get what they’re after. That makes as much business sense as it does environmental sense.

Beach erosion, which had been nibbling at the exposed hole, has taken the green and the final 300 yards that for more than two decades had been one of the most photographed and honored holes in the Carolinas, landing on many “best holes in the United States” lists.

The first part of what was a dogleg has been spared, and Wild Dunes has been able to build a 190-yard, par-3 finishing hole that plays directly toward the ocean. If you didn’t know the original existed, you’d be impressed by the windswept view from the tee.

It’s a dramatic loss to a golf course devastated by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

“The whole shoreline is going through this natural cycle, but nobody has seen anything like this before,” said Jeff Minton, director of golf at Wild Dunes.

The development of any seaside property that removes or alters the sand dunes is likely to increase the rate of erosion, particularly if those dunes are replaced with turf. That doesn’t mean that golf courses can’t and shouldn’t be built within sand dunes or along the seaside. It just means it’s a reality that the owner is going to have to deal with. It appears that Wild Dunes is dealing with it and plans on rebuilding.

There are incomplete plans for a beach renourishment program. The hope, Minton said, is the beach will be rebuilt and, eventually, the hole will be returned to its original design.

“It’s a legendary hole and our goal is to return it as best as possible to what it was,” Minton said.

Tom Fazio, whose reputation as a designer skyrocketed after he unveiled the Links Course, is considering options, including a partial rerouting when planned maintenance is done during 2009.

A good review of the golf course was written by Jay Flemma in April of 2006.

In this video, Jeff Minton discusses the changes that have been made to the 18th hole.

As well as building the “best seaside course in the world”, he intended to develop a second course, a 450-room hotel, 500 luxury homes, and hundreds of holiday apartments.

But his plan to build part of his signature course on an officially protected, wildlife-rich natural dune system, has brought objections from environmental bodies including Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, the RSPB and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

In a response last May, SNH said that building golf holes among the dunes would “effectively destroy” the conservation site and urged Trump to move the course onto nearby farmland within his estate.

There have so far been 78 objections against the development lodged with the council and only 11 letters of support.

…

Reaffirming Trump’s threat to pull out of the project unless his plans are accepted in their entirety, the firm said: “Without the ability to form the course in this location, there would be no basis for the resort, and it would not proceed.”

Sales and marketing director Tiffany Nelson said the root structure on the course has deteriorated since 2000, when it stopped irrigating with Central Arizona Project water and switched to reclaimed water.

The reclaimed water has high salt content, which drains into lakes on the course and then is pumped back onto the course for irrigation. Nelson said plans are to install a new drainage system next year, which will filter out the salt.

It will require all of the fairways to be resodded. The course will reopen on August 28th.

The future of many golf courses lies in the use of reclaimed water for irrigation. The impacts to turf are likely to be varied depending on the quality of the water, but the use of reclaimed water is a win-win situation for both the golf course, which gets a price break and a more reliable water supply, and the government, which generates income of off lightly treated water and doesn’t use the potable water supply for irrigation.

A government contractor mistook a herbicide for fertilizer and scorched 36 putting greens at Hains Point, one of the nation’s busiest golf courses and one of the few public tracks in the District of Columbia.

Groundskeepers for Golf Course Specialist Inc. killed the grass on all the greens at the course in East Potomac Park, according to National Park Service spokesman Bill Line and Golf Course Specialist spokesman Michael Williams.

“It was human error,” Williams said.

The enforcement action was a result of an inappropriate claim under the CWA’s farm pond exemption. A farm pond is excluded from Section 404 permitting requirements when the pond has an agricultural purpose, is sized according to its stated need, and does not adversely affect downstream or upstream waters. Barnsley’s Buffalo Pond was originally characterized as a farm pond, but was constructed to function as a golf water hazard and fishing amenity. The pond did not meet the purpose and scope of the farm pond exemption, and led to EPA’s initiation of the enforcement action.

Under the terms of the settlement, Barnsley will conduct onsite restoration work to return the natural flow of Dry Creek, a Georgia designated secondary trout stream. Barnsley also will pay a civil penalty of $15,000; complete a Supplemental Environmental Project by purchasing and transferring $100,000 in rights to wetland and river front property for perpetual preservation; and pursue an after-the-fact Section 404 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers with appropriate mitigation to authorize remaining impacts.

The course can be toured via a picture montage here. I’m not sure which hole(s) featured the “agriculture pond”. (Hey – I’m sure deer drank out of it.) Here is another benefit.

Twenty-eight acres of Drummond Swamp, a wetland that is part of the Etowah system, will also be preserved. Drummond Swamp is one of only three places in the country where a very rare plant, the seaside alder or Alnus maritima (Marsh.), is found.

Hmmm… a seaside alder in the north Georgia mountains? The seaside alder is also found in Oklahoma. Go figure.

Golf courses could serve as important wildlife sanctuaries, scientists say.

“There are more than 17,000 golf courses in the United States, and approximately 70 percent of that land is not used for playing,” said Ray Semlitsch, a biologist at University of Missouri-Columbia. “These managed green spaces aren’t surrogates for protected land and ecosystems, but they can include suitable habitat for species native to the area. Golf courses could act as nature sanctuaries if managed properly.”

Semlitsch, along with Michelle Boone, an assistant professor at Miami University in Ohio and former University of Missouri graduate student, and J. Russell Bodie, senior scientist for Audubon International, have studied how best to carry the idea out. They suggest buffering aquatic habitats from chemical runoff, surrounding wetland areas with a strip of forest or natural grassland and creating a diversity of pond types that mimic natural wetlands.

Completely drying golf course ponds in the late summer or early fall would benefit amphibian populations and biodiversity, the researchers found in a study that will be published later this year in the journal Conservation Biology.

“Non-permanent wetlands are more natural than permanent wetlands,” Semlitsch said. “Most natural wetlands dry for some periods of time, and the species that live in them are well-adapted for this. The natural drying process benefits amphibians, and it releases nutrients from the soil. Maintaining permanent ponds actually harms biodiversity.”

The research was supported by the United States Golf Association and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Semlitsch makes it sound as if golf courses aren’t currently serving as “nature sanctuaries”. I would take issue with that thinking. Also, many (most? all?) new golf courses are already buffering wetlands and reclaiming water, meaning that little, if any, chemical runoff enters wetlands.

Second completely drying golf course ponds in late summer or early fall doesn’t seem like a feasible option in many cases. Many golf course ponds serve as irrigation – late summer and early fall for most parts of the country is a very dry and still very warm period. This also assumes that the ponds are man made and have an outlet structure that would allow the ponds to drain. Many of these ponds have fish in them as well – I’m not sure that draining a pond would be in their best interest.

If, when the course is constructed, it is built with constructed wetlands, then this wouldn’t be necessary – the wetlands could function as they naturally would. Man-made wetlands are a very effective water runoff treatment practice.

Some of these ideas might be feasible in certain regions of the country and then only in very particular cases on individual golf courses. But I don’t see the what carrot that these folks could dangle in front of a golf course owner that would entice them to take any of these steps. In many cases, this is going to require some fairly lengthy and expensive environmental permitting – just to drain a pond for frogs.

Kohler gave an interesting interview prior to the start of the competition. He talked about everything from the past of Whistling Straits (and their problems with Wisconsin’s DNR) to the future.

KOHLER, WISCONSIN

RAND JERRIS: It’s a pleasure and an honor to welcome Herb Kohler to the interview room this afternoon. Maybe you could start us off with some thoughts on what it means to you personally to have the U.S. Senior Open this week here at Whistling Straits.

HERB KOHLER: You know, I’ve been walking out there, and it gives me goosebumps. To see these legends, people that I recognize, know by name, long before I played the game, walking these fairways, Hale Irwin, Ben Crenshaw, Fuzzy Zoeller, and just to go down there and talk to them about how they’re dealing with this wind is quite an experience.

RAND JERRIS: Talk a little bit about for those who might not know, talk about the story behind the creation of Whistling Straits. How did this golf course come to be here?

HERB KOHLER: Oh, goodness. It goes way back almost to the beginning of our involvement in golf. We opened a 125-room hotel in 1981, and this was long before the day of the email. By 1983 I had a stack of papers that one of my managers brought to my attention. These were suggestion slips, about 100 of them, and the essence of those slips were, Mr. Kohler, we thank you for taking us to a little public course over here and a private course over there, but you built what we thought would be a resort hotel. But you don’t have a golf course. You have all this land; why don’t you consider building something?
I didn’t know much of anything about golf. I played maybe twice a year with my father’s wooden shafts. But I had a great vice president of business development by the name of Bob Melbourne, and he happened to be a 3 handicap. We sat down and just talked about it for ten days, and the gist of that was we came up and decided to bring in six different designers and interview them, and we picked a pair who had done two courses for the PGA TOUR, had them lay out five holes, and then we brought them back and talked about their philosophies.

And their idea of designing resort golf was to make sure that the green surface was always two feet or more below the landing area on a par 4 or 5 or the tee of a par 3. Now, that’s all well and good for resort golf; it tends to speed the game.

But here we were over at what is now Black Wolf Run in and out of a river valley. What it did was to extend the distances between greens and tees, applying that philosophy. And that’s all well and good if you have carts, but if you’re going to walk the fairways, that’s not acceptable. 100 yards, 150 yards between the green and tee, just doesn’t work. And our notion even back then was championship golf. Even though we were building something for a resort hotel.

So believe it or not, in our ultimate wisdom, we terminated our relationship with that pair of designers and brought in another set of six different designers, and in the second set we found this curious fellow by the name of Pete Dye.

Well, after some conversation and a fair degree of turmoil, I happened to be a tree hugger, at that time especially, and Pete also loved trees but he liked to plant them after he wiped them out to build his course.

Anyway, we got through that first course, and it created such interest, such demand, that we were literally coming up, our lead time for getting a tee time was three months. Well, obviously that’s not acceptable for resort golf, especially someone who fashions themselves as running a five-diamond operation.

So we had no vision at all. We looked around, where could we build a third nine to relieve the pressure. We built that third nine, attached it to the first nine, didn’t affect demand one iota, still covered up. We went out and found land — this one actually took a month, found some more land for a fourth nine and attached it eventually to the second nine.

Well, when we did that, Golf Digest, which had named the first 18 holes the best public course in 1988, they wrote an editorial and said Kohler and Dye had committed the greatest crime in golf by tearing apart that first course and doing these attachments. Mind you, they wrote the article without ever seeing the course or the two new 18s. When they finally did a year later, they thankfully wrote a page of apology.

The upshot, however, was that those two 18s didn’t affect demand, and I had to go out and literally search for land for a third course, and that took me a long time because I was looking for sand-based land, and we have a fair amount on the lake shore, but it all happened to be owned by multiple property owners.

And I negotiated for well over a year and couldn’t get it done. Then I finally ended up taking out a plot map and looking for the biggest property I could find on Lake Michigan owned by a private party, and I found some land owned by a utility. Well, I called up the chairman and went down to visit him.

After a year and a half of conversations, he finally said to me, Mr. Kohler, the only way you’re going to get some land to build this course, at least get the land from me, is if you go out and buy an adjacent farm and then trade me that land so I can still build my utility. Well, the thought of a golf course next to a utility gave me a frightful image, but it was the only way I could get the land. So I went and bought the farm, made the trade, and we ended up with 500 acres on what you now see is Whistling Straits.

No sooner had we bought that and we got into a real tiff between the Department of Natural Resources, which had jurisdiction over wetlands, and the Army Corps of Engineers, which had jurisdiction over the lake shore. They wanted to protect erosion, the Army Corps did. And the Department of Natural Resources had to protect their wetlands. Wisconsin had a law that no mitigation — unlike the great water States of Florida, California, Maryland, et cetera. They prevented mitigation but not Wisconsin. So we had an impossible obstacle.

Thankfully the Army Corps rose up and said, now, look, DNR, why don’t you permit Mr. Kohler to build this course and do to them what state law requires of these other water states. For every acre of wetland they take, they have to put three back of active wetland. What we had out here was a flat dish about one foot deep, and that was enough — clay-based, enough of a base to contain the water. You couldn’t see it, it grew aquatic plants, but that was it.

But DNR persisted. The Army Corps said, now, look, if we let the erosion take its course, at about five feet per year, it’s going to be about ten years before the edge of the bank cuts into that wetland, and it’s going to drain it. So if you don’t let Kohler do something, you won’t have a wetland and we’re going to have an eroded bank and a mess in Lake Michigan. The outcome of all of that was they finally let us go ahead.

Then they asked Pete Dye to give them a precise drawing of the course we intended to build. Pete Dye has never drawn anything in his life. He puts a dot on the paper for a tee, a dot for the landing area and a dot for a green. Connect the dots, and that’s the last time pencil meets paper.

Everything Pete’s way and everything in building a course is with the eye. That’s the artist in Pete. That’s really why these courses are what they are and why they’re such a high degree of excellence, because of Pete Dye. No one back in the office drew any course.
We built that third course. The lead time was reduced slightly to two months. We finally ended up having to build a fourth course, and finally we now have an infrastructure that can balance the demand for golf. It’s this demand that we see in Wisconsin that’s been absolutely remarkable at making these courses successful. So that’s the story. I was a little long.

Q. I understand that when you go out and walk around your course, you get approached by quite a few fans who thank you for what you’ve done for golf, and it even happened at Oakmont I hear where people were coming up to you and thanking you. How does it feel to be signing autographs for golf fans, when 20 years allege you probably didn’t barely imagine getting to this point, and now here you are with people recognizing you for your golf instead of your generators or your hospitality. How does that feel?

HERB KOHLER: I have to start by telling you a cute little story. Pete Dye and I were standing near the first tee at Cruden Bay, Scotland, and talking to the owner of a hotel that we had stayed in that day. Pete was telling him about me and about some of the things he had done in the United States, and all of a sudden this chap popped up and said, “You mean to tell me he’s more than just a plumber?”

My life has changed dramatically since we broke ground for that first golf course, in the kinds of friends I have and the people you meet. Obviously the world of plumbing doesn’t attract this kind of media (laughing), nor do generators or even furniture.

It’s a remarkable experience. It starts with the values of the game and then impacts all the people around golf. You know, I think it’s remarkable how those people have been impacted by those values as suddenly as can be. It helped me sort out some of my executives, the importance of those values.

And then you come to the recognition and the spotlight that it shines on the company. So what this game has meant for Kohler has been remarkable. It couldn’t have happened any other way.

Q. Do you like to see the wind whip up like this, and do you hope it’s going to last through the weekend?

HERB KOHLER: You know, in 2004 I was just begging for it. It’s a little brisk right now (laughing). These guys even without the wind are going to have as much as they can handle.

Q. What kind of scoring would you like to see this week, and will you be rooting for players to go higher or lower?

HERB KOHLER: Well, back in ’04 on the first day of the tournament when they were 7-under, I was scared to death. Mind you, I restrained myself and didn’t say anything to the director of the tournament because I knew he’d just react the wrong way if I did say something, so I didn’t. And he adjusted. He adjusted in tees and greens, and it got progressively more difficult as the tournament went on.

And on the last day, the leader on the last day, 11-under, came back to 7-under, shot a 76, and they ended up for the four days at 7-under.

Now, was that a good score, a bad score? For me it was a great score. It was a great lesson on how you manage a golf course throughout the course of a tournament and you’re adjusting conditions. You’ve got to make it fair. You’ve just got to make it fair. It’s hard enough to hit these fairways in placid conditions, but it’s very, very difficult under the kind of wind that you’re feeling out there now.

So what kind of scoring? I know the USGA are absolute experts at adjusting to the extent they can to the conditions, as you can adjust out there with the tees and with the pin placements on these greens. So I want a fair and tough test, and this is the national championship for we owners. So be kind, USGA, be kind. Well, be slightly kind.

Q. As interesting as it’s all been to hear the history of how the properties have evolved to where they’re at today, it seems like when we read golf travel magazines it seems like resorts are doing things to keep pace with competition at golf courses, spas, other things. Where do you go from here? What’s next? Or are you in a stand pat mode for a while?

HERB KOHLER: It may seem like we’re standing pat but we aren’t. Our minds are going, and our search for land is continuing. There aren’t many areas left in this country, frankly, especially shoreline, especially on water you can’t see across. Very little land in this country left to build great golf courses. But there are those kinds of areas elsewhere in this world, and that’s what we’re looking for.

By the same token, as the game has evolved, courses have to keep up with the game. And when this tournament is over, Pete Dye is coming in here and going to take a hard look at some adjustments at Black Wolf Run. He may even tweak this one. But you have to make those tweaks. We have to keep challenging some of these players; they’re awfully good. We’re doing two things. We’re searching and we’re making some internal adjustments at the same time. But you’ll be hearing from us again.

Q. What are some of the areas that you’d be looking at, and just in terms of specifics, what kind of tweaking are you talking with on Black Wolf and here at Whistling Straits?

HERB KOHLER: Just really additional points of interest. One of the great holes on the River Course at Black Wolf is No. 11. It’s a long par 5 that wraps around the water. That’s a particular challenge on every shot, on each of the three approach shots. What we’re trying to do is get that level of imagination and difficulty, requiring imagination of the player, to create his own strategy in how he plays that. We hope to get that kind of difficulty of requiring that kind of strategy, strategic approach, on each of those holes, on both courses at Black Wolf. So those are the things we’re looking at. Any one thing I can’t tell you until Pete gets out there and we talk about it.

Q. Pete Dye is going to come out next year?

HERB KOHLER: Well, he’s coming out in a week and we’re going to walk.

RAND JERRIS: Can I ask you if you have a favorite hole out here? Is there a place on this golf course that to you really represents your vision, your dream of what this could be and a place that you sort of like to retreat to?

HERB KOHLER: You know, you ask me anything favorite, favorite course, favorite hole. How many children do you have? Which one is your favorite (laughter)? I mean, I can literally talk about every hole on the Straits course and tell you about things that fascinate me. But you take the last four holes coming in on this course, and it’s going to be hard to find four holes that create that kind of interest, that kind of variety, that kind of difficulty. And I think that’s the real test for a national championship.

Q. Talk about Dale Douglas. He’s 71 years old, 22nd straight U.S. Senior Open. As a golfer yourself who’s been slowed by a few injuries, what do you think of that kind of durability to just be able to do 600 Tour events, 22 in a row at this level?

HERB KOHLER: I can’t even imagine it. You know, you would think the arthritis, whatnot, would take over and slow down the swing a little bit. But he keeps going. I mean, how he does it, I — maybe it’s diet, maybe it’s continual exercise and a good, loving wife.

Q. Compare from 2004 to 2007 some of the course changes. I know Jay Haas said he didn’t think there was much of a difference other than some of the distances maybe being shorter. What do you see as the difference in the course setup or something that is a little bit different from ’04?

HERB KOHLER: The 18th hole is just different. The fairway from the tee shot is substantially different. The level — the fairway used to slope. We leveled the fairway, put up a set of bunkers on the right-hand side and a fairly significant drop on the left-hand side and a wasteland, and then he changed the bunkering at the very end of that plateau. If the ball runs to the end, chances are fairly good if it’s running, if it’s flying or a big bounce, it’ll run into a bunker. It takes — Tiger could out-drive the fairway today with a 320-yard shot, but Tiger, unless the wind is blowing in his face, wouldn’t use a driver. So I don’t think anyone is going to be beyond that fairway, especially the way the USGA is setting up those tees.

But then that second shot, Peter actually reduced the lobes on the green and probably will be a little bit more difficult than it was in 2004. And the 2004 greens created a lot of excitement. But this one will, too, and I think more so. When he cut out those big lobes, it made it look a little bit like a four-leaf clover, thankfully.

RAND JERRIS: We thank you very much for your time this afternoon.

HERB KOHLER: You’re welcome. Appreciate it.

Failing to play by new watering rules could cost 13 South Florida golf courses cited for failing to meet drought-induced irrigation limits.

The South Florida Water Management District on Tuesday released the names of the golf courses, including nine in Palm Beach County and two in Broward County, that received citations ranging from $1,500 to $6,000.
…
Because restrictions changed during April, from 15 percent reductions to 30 percent reductions, the district set a targeted cutback just over 24 percent and then issued citations to courses that failed to meet at least 90 percent of that standard.

In May, the district increased restrictions to 45 percent for courses in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

But before you shake the naughty finger at the golf courses, they’re but a fraction of the problem. In fact, they don’t even come close to using the amount of water that private citizens are putting down on their lawns. Private citizens use 10 times the amount of water on their lawns that golf courses use.

Golf courses used about 1.4 billion gallons of water in April, which was down from the usual 2.5 billion gallons of water during times without restrictions, Rodriguez said.

While golf courses are among the largest individual users of water, their total use is dwarfed by the amount of water residents dump on their lawns.

Golf courses typically claim about 3 percent of the water used each day in southeast Florida, according to the water management district. About 60 percent of the region’s water supply goes to public consumption, with about half of that used to irrigate landscaping.