[D_Malley]

It looks like my course will no longer provide drinking water from coolers on the golf course for players.  We will have to inform all players before they go out to purchase bottled water.  I am told that many courses are doing this due to lawsuits over contaminated water from coolers.

I am curious as to what other courses which no longer providing water are doing.  I guess we could put vending machines out on the course, but i really would not like the looks of that.  Are there any other options that are less visually disrupting?

[mike_malone]

 Dan,

    What you are doing seems good. You will see people bringing their own water over time if they are repeat players. You could put some notice on your website to the effect that "water will not be provided on the course because of legal issues".

[Joe Bausch]

I must admit that I am not a fan of this at all.  My home course tried to implement this strategy 2 years ago and finally they went back to water coolers.  I told the pro that he would rarely see me at the course if there was no water available at multiple stations on the course.  As a walker, on a hot day I can consume over a gallon of water.  I don't want to have to carry that much weight in my golf bag.

I believe some water coolers are better about minimizing contamination than others. 

If you must go to bottled water, then consider what one club did here (Wyncote):  put out big coolers with bottled water and use the honor system for payment.  Charge 1 buck for a bigger bottle and know that even if only 1 in 3 people pay, you're still not losing money.

[Will MacEwen]

My club uses fountains or hosebibs that put out municipal water.  Everyone just fills their bottles from those.

[Brent Hutto]

Please don't start generating a couple of tons of waste plastic per year by providing bottled water. That is a a hugely irresponsible approach. Tell them to just keep the darned water coolers disinfected. And bundling the cost of bottled water into other fees to make it "free" is worse still.

What we need is for someone to get sued for flooding the world with plastic-bottle trash...

[JSlonis]

At Tavistock we went to bottled water on the course two years ago.  We have them located in three spots on the course as well as the halfway house.  We keep the bottles in nice wood finished coolers that match the other wood accessories on the course.  They are very unobtrusive and the service has been a big hit so far. We also don't charge for it individually, the club covers the cost. 

[Jim_Kennedy]

If the water coolers are handled by the same people who do your food service then there is much less of a chance that they will become contaminated.

Bottled water can cost about $.10 to .15 each, and be safely distributed to a few places around the course by anyone on the staff.

 

[mike_malone]

 Dan's place is a public course. 

   Joe,

     You're a smart guy; you will engineer a solution. How about placing a bottle of water in the freezer over night and keeping it in your car. Then after nine replace the first bottle with the second one.

   I think this suggests why we need intertwining nines so you could drop off a bottle on #13 as you walk down #5 , for example. 

[Brian Ross]

When I worked at Wild Wing Plantation in Myrtle Beach, we didn't have water coolers on the course.  Instead, we had small coolers on all of our carts which we would stock with 6 small 8 oz. bottles of water and ice before each cart went out, and of course, our rangers would have extra water when needed.  We had a deal with Coke and they would bring us pallets of the small bottles.  Obviously, it is a cost you would have to offset but we certainly got a lot of compliments on it, especially in the summer months.

[Mike Cirba]

Speaking of legalities, doesn't this set the stage for a lawsuit from someone who has a serious medical issue because of dehydration, or worse yet, heat stroke or even an MI due to dehydration?  

Giving someone permission to walk over your 200 acres, etc., without providing any means of refueling liquids seems to me to be a bigger potential health-risk, as well as possibly a legal one.

[mike_malone]

 Mike C,

     That person could easily bring his own water to deal with his hydration problem. In fact, he would be crazy to take a chance that water would be on the course as he needs it. I know that on the hottest days when you need water the most is when coolers are most likely to be dry!

[Cliff Hamm]

Public course in Massachusetts also uses the cooler/honor system.  Cost is $1 with proceeds donated to an environmental charity.

[Michael Dugger]

Hmmm,

So, either someone gets sued because the water is contaminated...

Or someone gets sued because a player faints from heat exhaustion...

I am with Cirba and Hutto on this.  We HAVE to have water on the course....

And the last thing we need are a million more empty water bottles...

[PCCraig]

I would agree with Mike C that this just raises more legal issues reallly. I can't say how much water I've drank from golf course supplied coolers and I've never had any serious issues. Do that many people get sick from it???

Reminds me of a stat a college prof. gave us: It's actually cleaner and safer to drink from your own toilet than it is from the average public water fountain.

[Michael Dugger]

When I worked at Wild Wing Plantation in Myrtle Beach, we didn't have water coolers on the course.  Instead, we had small coolers on all of our carts which we would stock with 6 small 8 oz. bottles of water and ice before each cart went out, and of course, our rangers would have extra water when needed.  We had a deal with Coke and they would bring us pallets of the small bottles.  Obviously, it is a cost you would have to offset but we certainly got a lot of compliments on it, especially in the summer months.

What if I am not taking a cart?

[Brent Hutto]

When I worked at Wild Wing Plantation in Myrtle Beach, we didn't have water coolers on the course.  Instead, we had small coolers on all of our carts which we would stock with 6 small 8 oz. bottles of water and ice before each cart went out, and of course, our rangers would have extra water when needed.  We had a deal with Coke and they would bring us pallets of the small bottles.  Obviously, it is a cost you would have to offset but we certainly got a lot of compliments on it, especially in the summer months.

What if I am not taking a cart?

I'm pretty sure at Wild Wing if you're not taking a cart you're not playing.

Golf in the middle of the 21st century is destined to consist of fat people in golf carts leaving behind an endless stream of garbage that will be around long after the course they're playing is plowed under.

[mike_malone]

 What about taking care of yourself ?  Bottled water is a plague!

    If the courtesy of free water is unlikely because of legal issues then just alert people to come prepared.

[Steve Pozaric]

At our private course, we went from water jugs to drinking fountains and added in-house designed/built containers for ice chests.  We have a lot of complients on the way it looks compared to the water jugs.  In the off season when the water is off and half way house closed, we will put out coolers with bottled beverages (water, soda and beer) using the honor system.

[Mike Cirba]

Mike Malone,

I'll need a camel or pack mule to carry the amount of water I'll consume walking a course on a hot day.

Having suffered dehydration walking a famous course that shall remain nameless, it's a very serious issue to me personally.

Anyone playing golf in the ultra-dry midwest or southwest is needing to be drinking water between almost every shot and having just come back from Arizona a few weeks ago you could drink all round and not need to stop and urinate the entire time.

[mike_malone]

 Joe,

    Your Wyncote example is a indicator of what is wrong with our country; the honest people pay for the crooks' behaviour (sounds like Wall Street!)

[Brian Ross]

When I worked at Wild Wing Plantation in Myrtle Beach, we didn't have water coolers on the course.  Instead, we had small coolers on all of our carts which we would stock with 6 small 8 oz. bottles of water and ice before each cart went out, and of course, our rangers would have extra water when needed.  We had a deal with Coke and they would bring us pallets of the small bottles.  Obviously, it is a cost you would have to offset but we certainly got a lot of compliments on it, especially in the summer months.

What if I am not taking a cart?

I'm pretty sure at Wild Wing if you're not taking a cart you're not playing.

Golf in the middle of the 21st century is destined to consist of fat people in golf carts leaving behind an endless stream of garbage that will be around long after the course they're playing is plowed under.

Haha, that is very true and something I forgot to mention.  Riding is required there.  However, that doesn't mean you can't place water bottles at strategic places around the course as well as small recyclying containers.  We also had our bag drop guys recycle all of the plastic bottles that showed up in the carts after the round.  It's not perfect but IMO is a good alternative to the community water cooler, especially if you are concerned about lawsuits, etc.

[Richard Choi]

This was in the 2000 issue of Golf Digest:

"On-course water can be a real lifesaver. But just how pure is the H2O in that cooler? We put the question to The Institute of Environmental and Human Health and The Department of Biological Sciences at Texas Tech. They tested 11 samples of water in coolers at three courses in Texas. Two courses had nonmeasurable numbers of colony-forming bacteria, but water from one cooler contained more than 9,000 colony-forming units, which may be significant depending on the type of bacteria present.

One sample contained a suspected degradate of benomyl, a fungicide. Warning: Know the source before you drink. Bottled water is usually safer."

[mike_malone]

 Mike,

    You are also a smart guy and , more importantly, a gca genius. You should only play courses in the worst heat where you can drop off a few bottles on parallel holes that are on different nines. You are at risk that some of Joe's Wyncote guys could steal your water so don't use some expensive bottle.

[Mike Cirba]

Mike,

    You are also a smart guy and , more importantly, a gca genius. You should only play courses in the worst heat where you can drop off a few bottles on parallel holes that are on different nines. You are at risk that some of Joe's Wyncote guys could steal your water so don't use some expensive bottle.

Mike

One of your favorite walkable courses has recently stopped making water available on the course.   

Should I hide my bottle stash on the old routing or the current routing? 

[Adam Clayman]

While the excuse seems justified, the profit on bottled water is too great to ignore. If the course is careful about the filling of the jugs and they are stored in tamper proof housings, there's no reason not to provide it, other than profit. Its extremely poor stewardship to promote the further use of plastic bottles. 

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