Let's suppose for a moment that I was a golf fanatic. The truth is that I'm not, and for me, that's a good thing. My conservation biology classmates might have my head if I supported big green lawns in the middle of the desert. Still, I have golfing friends, and their teeing off on lush Bermuda grass among sand dunes is totally normal.
But if I were a golfer I might wonder about alternatives to the game. Golf courses are notorious for using lots of water resources and covering up natural habitat, so I've invented my own version of the sport.
My adaptation of the game would probably be called Ratified Environmental American League golf, aka REAL golf. The rules would be primarily the same. A birdie would still be a birdie, and each hole would be ranked using par. The main changes would be to the course itself and to the golfing etiquette.
First of all, a REAL golf course would be required to remain 70 percent semi-natural. In other words, there would be no mowing, no watering, and only small landscaping revisions of the natural land. You couldn't play golf surrounded by shoulder high bushes, so trimming would be permitted. This "natural look" could actually help draw people to your unique golf course. It seems to me that golfers must get bored playing on courses that are all groomed to look the same. What Floridian wouldn't love playing around the saguaro on hole seven?
My next revision may not be original. Someone told me this actually exists, but after researching it on the Internet, I couldn't find a word about it. So, according to an unreliable source, people in the Middle East play a version of golf like ours, but instead of maintaining big, expensive lawns, they just carry pieces of plastic turf with them as they play. Once the ball drops, you pick it up, put it on your fake turf mat and then you're ready to go on with your next shot. It's a good idea, right? This way ,you're not trying to hit the ball out of the sand (unless you're in a designated sand trap), and you're not wasting tons of water maintaining a green golf course.
Maybe you see a flaw with REAL golfing by now. People say that golfing is a challenging sport because you never know what direction the ball will roll once it lands. If you're playing in sand, it won't roll anywhere, which makes the game much easier. That is where my third stipulation comes in.
The other 30 percent of the course can be manicured to accommodate grassy slopes and dips to keep the posterity of the game intact. Let's face it — if you're using every inch of the golf course, you probably don't need additional challenges between you and the hole. The idea is to put the manicured sections in the areas where people are most likely to be playing.
Lastly, the part of the new game that's going to hurt: walk! Isn't golf supposed to be a sport anyway? Walking the course would help bolster your reputation as an athlete, and it would be better for the environment.
So, ditch the carts someday and walk on over to a REAL golf course, because there's no reason why "go green" can't work in two different ways.
Lindsay Wood is a conservation biology senior. Reach her at lindsay.wood@asu.edu.
