Lone and Level Sands

By Jeremy Pern, EIGCA Senior Member

With the Committed to Green initiatives in the 90’s and, more recently, the R&A and Golf Environment Organisation, the golf industry has tried to introduce sensible debate on environmental issues. Through education, research, case studies, certification programmes, publications and websites many golf organisations, green keepers, agronomists, golf architects and a few environmental NGO’s have sought to help developers, designers, golfers and most importantly the general public, to understand the pro’s and con’s of the environmental arguments.

Whilst those efforts have been largely successful in countering the objections raised by the anti-golf fundamentalists a decade or two ago, the goal posts have shifted. Environmental issues used to be confined to birds and bees stuff. Nowadays global warming, water wars and carbon emissions have replaced DDT, pesticides and biodiversity. The golf world cannot be described as being fleet of foot in the face of change, nor enthusiastic to embrace new ideas, which perhaps accounts for its general unawareness of the public’s current attitudes towards new golf signature developments with their often huge earthworks, water requirements, mighty carbon footprints and often dubious economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Golf course architects are sometimes caught between a hammer and a very hard anvil – between their desire to exercise their profession, creating exciting designs and earning a living; and actually putting into practise what their own publicity material often preaches – respect for the environment. Of course most architects would think twice about wilfully stirring up a hornet’s nest of opposition by ignoring common sense in favour of ego-building design choices that end up in the planners bin, and this is seldom a major issue on smaller low profile projects,

But when the developer and the architect are sufficiently powerful in terms of money and reputation (often the case on the prestigious projects through which public opinion is inevitably formed), this is not always so. Things are done that should not be done.

The Jack Nicklaus designed Samanah golf course was opened last year near Marrakech, Morocco. The course is built within a large residential development where over 400 villas are for sale, prices start at €450,000 and moving up towards €2,000,000. The French development company is proud of the fact that the golf course meets the severest technical specifications, that the greens meet USGA norms and that the course will satisfy the rigorous standards imposed by the PGA of America. There are now over twenty golf courses in Morocco, many of them world class, the earliest dating back as far as 1917, and, Morocco being a sandy sort of place, all have used local materials in construction. All, that is, except Samanah. Apparently no Moroccan sand could satisfy the specifications and the contractor was obliged to import the construction sand from France.

In Tunisia last year, The Residence, a Robert Trent Jones II designed golf course also opened for play. Located on the outskirts of Tunis, by Nicklaus’s Samanah standards it is a rather modest development with about 150 villas that were all sold off plan. According to the golf club’s website, it is situated “in the heart of a natural reserve where migrating birds and wildlife abound” and is, as you would expect, “ a veritable jewel”. The course was actually built on a salt marsh and to ensure adequate grass growth above the salt, the ground level of the golf course was raised a metre or two. Hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of material was imported from 25-35 kilometres away to fill in the marsh. The houses are built, the clubhouse is up but its luxuries are still for the few, perhaps alarmingly few, because to date the new course has apparently only 17 members.

And then there is Donald Trump, a man of Scottish extraction and trans-Atlantic sensibility. He has plans to build a £1 billion resort with 1,500 housing units and two golf courses at £90 million north of Aberdeen. (£90 million for two golf courses? In Scotland?) But there is a problem with sensitive sand dunes. A quote from the Guardian newspaper of the 3rd Nov 2008 sums it up well.” Trump refused to move that section of the course, again overruling his own environmental experts, telling the planning inquiry that he didn’t do ‘half assed.’” Mr Trump’s lead golf architect is Dr Martin Hawtree with Mr Tom Fazio as consultant. Whilst Dr Hawtree’s name may not sell houses as well as a name like Nicklaus or Trent Jones II, Mr Trump no doubt chose him because of it. Dr Hawtree, the doyen of British Golf Course Architecture surely raises fewer hackles in Scottish environmental circles than would an American of greater repute.

Importing sand for Samanah from France to Morocco looks daft. The carbon footprint of their golf course could surely have been reduced using local materials without any appreciable reduction in the quality of the course. And self styled “Master Architect” Robert Trent Jones II. (motto: “Of the earth…. For the spirit”) was apparently unfazed in Tunisia by filling in a salt marsh with muck from 30 kilometres away. The project would surely not have been approved in Mr Jones’ II. home state of California, though it does start to look as if it might have been OK’d in Scotland where Mr Trump, Dr Hawtree, and Mr Fazio have yet to build their monument.

It may of course never happen, but if it does go ahead as currently planned shouldn’t we, as golf course architects, be asking ourselves about what effect this project may have on our collective reputation and how such a sorry tale will appear to the outside world? Does Scotland really need another world class links course at the price of irreplaceable sand dunes and our reputation as qualified professionals whose judgements are sought and respected rather than bought and trashed?

I believe that it is time for golf course architects to accept a wider responsibility for what they are paid to do; and paid in many cases very handsomely. If we are to continue to design and build golf courses world wide that meet common approval rather than universal condemnation our profession requires a moral compass. And at least where the planet is concerned, we should start to use it.

I quote from a prescient lecture given 17 years ago by Dr Martin Hawtree.

“Recession may inevitably bring about a deflation of our architectural egos, but its positive virtue may be to return to the idea of playing golf over a rural or parkland landscape without unduly changing it. We, as architects, may need to cultivate the virtues of anonymity, and place hugely more weight to the full range of landscape issues just as golfers themselves may have to make some sacrifices if they wish to enter upon privileged landscapes.”

This article originally appeared in Golf Course Architecture April 2009. Click here for further information.