Tim,
I'd like to offer my critique of your article.
"It’s one thing to feel the firm turf under foot; it’s quite another to experience a well-executed iron shot as the feeling travels from the fingertips through the hands and arms and directly into the soul."
A great line, Is that your own?
"On ecological grounds, links golf has much to teach us. In terms of sustainable maintenance at an affordable level that’s playable for all golfers, America, I am sorry to say, is lagging far behind."
Unfortunately, so are superintendents’ salaries. Some of us have to raise families, you know.
"Ironically, being “green” in golf is not the same as being “green” ecologically. In America, dormant Bermudagrass in the South is the closest playing condition to links turf. Yet while we continually profess to want to emulate Scottish or Irish links golf, we consistently overseed dormant Bermuda to achieve soft, green conditions for the winter golfers. It’s an expensive and grotesquely wasteful use of resources."
This is debatable. As mentioned by several posters above, dormant bermuda in wet winters will be anything but "linksy". Soils, climates, and turf species are completely different, defying a direct comparison.
"Which begs another question: "
In point of writing style, it doesn't. It may “raise” a question, or “pose” a question, but it doesn’t “beg” a question. To “beg a question” is a form of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place. For example, “They are in jail because they are bad people, and they are bad people because they are in jail.”
"The agronomics of links turf are pretty impressive: dry, lean and firm. The ecology demonstrates proper maintenance practices developed through many centuries. There is no Poa trivialis on a links course. (Poa being symptomatic of too much irrigation and fertilization.) Poa trivialis, an annual bluegrass, is prominent in overwatered courses in America. It invades when superintendents, fearful for their jobs, overwater to keep their courses “Augusta” green and their members living an egotistical and unsustainable dream. Such a defensive maintenance regime allows Poa to overtake the drought-tolerant bents originally planted. Once the Poa is established, the superintendent is stuck with overwatering to keep alive what essentially is a weed. ."
You are confusing Poa trivialis with Poa annua. You give a fairly accurate descripton of Poa annua. P. trivialis is a perennial. It is often used in winter overseeding mixes on bermudagrass in the U.S. and elsewhere. To say definitively there is no Poa of either species found on links courses is incorrect. There is less than in the U.S. but it is always there. The last itme I saw Royal County Down (in 2004) the greens were about 50% Poa annua.