Image Problems?

[Marc Haring]

A bit OT but I’m beginning to think that the game has changed from the boom years where demand outstripped supply and where the game was elitist and proud of it, to where it has to get over this image problem it has at the moment if it is to grow. Is it about time the various tours started to think about their responsibilities to the game and tried to visit venues that are more representative, affordable, accessible and most important of all environmentally sound. The professional tours present the game to the world more than anything else and so would it now be right for them to either try and get away from the corporate venues or to start pressurising those same venues into change?

Personally I believe we need to start presenting golf as a game for the people and a game that has a major role to play in benefiting the environment.

[JESII]

Marc,

I have zero facts, but I would bet the TPC courses around the country are pretty high on environmental sensitivity. I assume this for their own political reasons more than anything.

Is there any way for golf, and therefore golf courses, to actually benefit the environment? Or are you asking for less damage?

[Marc Haring]

JES

There are a vast number of ways that courses can benefit the environment. They can practically become nature reserves in the out of the way places. My own course has gone from monocrop farmland with little to nothing in the way of habitat creation and a heavy user of chemicals, to 300 acres that is teeming with wildlife of every description and a very low user of chemicals and even water for that matter. The difference in environmentally aware courses and the ones that aren't is huge. I haven’t got the stats with me but there are a large number of golf courses that have become designated sites of special scientific interest following the work they have carried out.

[JESII]

Very cool.

At that level I would be very surprised if my assertion about TPC courses is even remotely accurate.


One thing I did not state the first time is that my position on the notion that we get most of our ideas and guidance from televised golf is faulty. Or to say differently, if we are getting our direction from televised golf it is our own fault what comes. The TV Tours have a business to run, it's up to the rest of us to guide golf down the proper path. Whether it be environmental sensibility, maintenance and agronomical issues related to ideal playing conditions, equipment technology or anything else.

[Marc Haring]

They have a business to run but given that they are so influential and that they surely recognise that they need the regular golfer or there business suffers, should they not try and help improve the games image. I think it is like supermarkets recognising that they need to start selling organic produce or fair trade stuff. Even the fact that the consumer gets all the nutritional info on products as well. Is that valid? Do the tours need to get a bit organic and start telling the consumer about all the good that their product is doing them?