If water cost a dollar a gallon,

[Kirk Gill]

Interesting. So what incentive is there for a course to increase capacity?

[Mike Benham]

At one time we looked into recycling the outflow water created by the air conditioning system in the clubhouse.

But, every drop is monitored, irrespective of its source.

Patrick -

As you state, NJ monitors every drop of water but do they have the legal right to control the water and its usage that a property owner acquires on his own property (such as your example and excluding well water)?

But to provide an answer to your question, I think you would see varying changes to golf turf management in the US based on regions ... without a doubt, the courses will be dryer and throughout the warmer / non-raining season be inconsistent in color and firmness.

Because of near daily afternoon thunderstorms, Southern courses might survive the best.  Courses in the midwest might be ok also as there are 1,000 of acres of crop that are only irrigated with rainfall.

Desert golf will no longer exist with natural turf ...

Mike

[John Shimp]

I live in the south.  Down here things would change a lot.

Playing surfaces would change back to the hardiest of grasses like common bermuda and there would be far more weeds and inconsistencies to the lies.  (In the early 80's the course I played on in SC watered little and this is what it was like.  We also had greens that got to be unplayable in the summer because they'd get so hard that you would putt off them if you got above the hole.  It was fun to try to keep your ball below the hole and horribly frustrating if you got above it. Most of the greens weren't like this just the heavily tilted ones.)

I think the shaft/golf ball distances would be an even bigger deal.  My SC course played incredibly short in the summer as the fairways were baked and rough was long but dry.  The one thing you had to have in the summer though was accuracy because the ball would run into trouble or OB easily.

People would learn to hit lower shots and higher lob shots around the greens better.  Firm conditions in the fairways allow runups but hard baked greens do at times require high soft shots with cut spin.

Courses would revert over time more towards older course styles in the US or overseas.  My SC course Palmetto used to be a great example of low water use design.  Smallish maintained areas (fairways and green sizes), nasty and rugged areas throughout the course with fescue and other weed grasses, bunker hazards vs. water hazards, and greens with some severe slopes to provide putting and chipping interest as the common bermuda greens tended to putt a bit slower due to length.

[henrye]

Pat.  It seems to me that the Florida courses or a Fisher's Island could always use desalinized salt water.  Perhaps there are regulations that prevent it, but my grandfather built a place down in Antigua, where water was scarce and built his own desalinization facility.  There's a lot of water in the ocean.

[Ryan Crago]

Patrick,

great question.

from a societal perspective, i think that reclaiming storm and greywater would become essential in urban areas... if you ever look at the volume of water used in things like your kitchen sink, and laundry, you'd be amazed.  

of course, regulatory processes will have to loosen (more) to allow this water to be treated, and put back into the hydrologic system for landscape, and even some household uses (ie/toilets).  

Golf wise: it would be possible for the game to survive, but i think there would be a greater emphasis on using greenspace/green infrastructure including as golf courses, to treat local grey and storm water... some of that water could then be put towards irrigation.

as far as Ian's comment goes "golf will be for the very rich"... i think thats true.. but only partly.  in some maybe perverted ways, i see an increase in water cost as a good thing, in terms of altering expectations of the "average" golfer - ie/ the north american golfer accepting the aesthetics  and realities of a course that looks like Hoylake last week, rather than the lush, soft, green they've been acustomed to.  The "very rich" would still be able to have their lush green fairways, but they would be the exception, rather than the rule.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Is it possible that, given Mr. Mucci's scenario, that some golf courses would look into the possibility of creating more ponds and lakes on their property for the purpose of caching water for irrigation? Would this be feasible?

This is exactly what is happening in the Toronto area.  The older courses, mainly private clubs, have traditionally been drawing their water from the rivers and creeks that flow through the course.  But starting in the very near future the courses will be severely limited in the amount of water that they can derive from these waterways therefore almost all of the courses are trying to figure out where they can put irrigation ponds.  Do you make them a feature of the golf course or do you hide them away so that you don't have to worry about the appearance of the pond?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Pat,
You asked me: "If water rationing were implemented today, how quickly and how radically would golf courses change?".
I don't know, but some courses and some government agencies are taking a proactive stance. Take Old Marsh, it reduced its annual water consumption from over 112m gallons in 1988 to less than 50m in 1999 (ACSP) and the conditions have improved. Even NJ's SEC came up with some grant money to fund wastewater reuse demonstration projects, including one for a golf course (GSEN).

We have zero fairway irrigation at Hotchkiss (I take that back, we put a few heads on our ninth fairway after George fixed it for us) but, as the USGA concurred with our Super, we have some very hardy grasses that always seem to make it through our droughty spells.
The wave of the future is likely to be drought resistant grasses, along with recapture of all the water used on the course(like Old Marsh), effluent water, more retention ponds, and better cooperation between government, developers and groups like Audubon International.

If you plan for the future, as you mentioned your club does, then I don't think you'll see a big impact if water increases in price.

[Craig Sweet]

Patrick Mucci....do you seriously think that ALL water is used for golf coourse purposes?

If water was indeed $1 a gal...I can guarentee you that playing golf and golf courses would be a thing of the past.

90% of the food you eat would be a thing of the past.

50% of the manufactured goods in the world would be a thing of the past.

DO YOU seriously think anyone will be playing golf on when at a minimum it would take 18,000 gals. (1000 per green) each night to keep greens alive?

Perhaps $18,000 a night for minimal irrigation is fine with you?

[Joe Hancock]

Would this be easier to grab on to if the question was " How would golf courses look if water became prohibitively expensive?"

Joe

[Matt_Cohn]

I played Roddy Ranch today. The fairways were green except for a few browned out spots in each fairway.

I enjoyed playing off the browner parts - they were firm and impact felt fantastic, except on one of them I did semi-blade a wedge because the lie was just too tight.

Questions though:
Can divots recover on browned-out fairways? Wouldn't divots remain until the course greened up again? Wouldn't this be a real problem on a public course? How do the links courses deal with it?

Wouldn't cart traffic also have a greater impact because the grass wouldn't grow back?

I was also shocked that brown grass two feet high - something I've never encountered before - offers absolutely zero resistance to even a 70-yard wedge swing. Fascinating.

Can U.S. courses maintain greens in a manner that fits with hard, browned out fairways? Hoylakes greens were softer than the fairways. Wouldn't this situation be even more exaggerated in the U.S.?

[Tony Ristola]

Quote
"I enjoyed playing off the browner parts - they were firm and impact felt fantastic, except on one of them I did semi-blade a wedge because the lie was just too tight.

Questions though:
Can divots recover on browned-out fairways? Wouldn't divots remain until the course greened up again? Wouldn't this be a real problem on a public course? How do the links courses deal with it?"

Matt, you bladed the shot because you didn't hit the ball properly. Don't blame the conditions

I grew up playing a couple courses in the PNW, one which had fairway irrigation, the other didn't, and which was brown come July.  Once some rain falls and the temperatures come down a bit, the (poa) fairways recovered fully in a couple weeks.

In north Germany one course I built has no fairway irrigation, is on sandy soil, while another has fairway irrigation. Both courses have 18 inches of sandy topsoil. The course with no irrigation recovers as the course in the PNW did. The leaf may be brown, but the roots are still fine. Once the heavenly irrigation system kicks back in, the leaf returns. The course with fairway irrigation... I wish they would turn it off... they over-water and over-feed.  The course was great the first year, hard and fast, but then the board got infected by the "green is great" mentality.

The reason there was no resistance to the long brown grass could be that it is very thin. Looks thick on TV, but is actually thin, easy to find your ball and move it forward.