The greening of golf

Sport, globalization and the environment

Brad Millington, Brian Wilson

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781784993276
• eBook ISBN: 9781526104854
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Golf is a major global industry. The sport is played by more than 60 million people worldwide and there are more than 32,000 courses in 140 countries across the globe. This book looks at the power relationships in and around golf, examining whether the industry has demonstrated sufficient leadership on environmental matters to be trusted to make weighty decisions with implications for public and environmental health. The first comprehensive study of the varying responses to golf-related environmental issues, it is based on extensive empirical work, including research into historical materials and interviews with stakeholders in golf such as course superintendents, protesters and health professionals. The authors examine golf as a sport and as a global industry, drawing on and contributing to literatures pertaining to environmental sociology, global social movements, institutional change, corporate environmentalism and the sociology of sport.

PART I

Introduction and tools for seeing golf sociologically

1

Introduction: approaching golf and environmental issues

In a 1964 edition of The Golf Course Reporter, a premiere journal for course superintendents in North America, journal editor Gene C. Nutter wrote a scathing review of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson, whose now-renowned book included criticisms of chemical companies for their environment-damaging behaviours, was admonished by Nutter for loading her arguments with emotional rather than scientific pleas, and for using “isolated examples” of pesticide-induced harms. Nutter went so far as to suggest that “the threat of increased governmental controls [e.g. on chemicals] is a threat to greater freedom of action in our country and to the necessary use of essential agricultural tools” (Nutter, 1964: 50). For Nutter, this “threat to greater freedom of action” was also a threat to the freedom of golf industry members – members who, to a great extent, saw pesticides (i.e. chemicals) as necessary tools for superintendents committed to keeping golf courses playable and pristine.

Almost 40 years later, in 2001, another article appeared in this same journal – by this point renamed Golf Course Management – that had a very different take on golf-related environmental issues and Rachel Carson’s book. The article, written as part of the celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA), included the following excerpt:

For generations, greenskeepers went about their jobs more or less without regulation and a kind of environmental innocence, or ignorance, if you will. But that all began to change in 1962 when Rachel Carson’s book, ‘Silent Spring,’ hit the shelves. The ground-breaking work, a treatise on the dangers of pesticide use, caused much of society to take notice. (Ostmeyer, 2001: 41)

What happened?

What happened in and around the golf industry between the early 1960s and early 2000s that led to this change in tone and content? What role do the pesticides that Nutter so vehemently defended continue to play in golf course maintenance – and what did the change from ‘ignorant’ to (presumably) ‘responsible’ practices on the part of golf course superintendents look like? What did we know – and what do we now know – about the impacts of pesticides used on golf courses on humans, animals, and the natural environment? How are golf-related pesticides currently regulated, who enforces these regulations, and what ethical stance underpins these regulations (i.e. is a ‘precautionary’ approach driving regulation, or a ‘cost-benefit’ one)? How is the problem of excessive water usage, another major environmental concern associated with golf course maintenance, dealt with and viewed by industry, governments, and others? Why is it so important to have pristine conditions on golf courses? How have governments, activists, and various golf industry members responded to golf-related environmental concerns over time? How viable is ‘organic golf’ (i.e. chemical-free golf) as an alternative to synthetic chemical-dependent golf course management?

These are the sorts of questions we explore in this book. In pursuing answers, we trace the evolution of the golf industry’s response to environmental concerns and describe how the practices of golf superintendents have changed over time. We also outline how changes in the golf industry have been justified. This means examining the maturing public relations strategies of golf industry members and highlighting how industry representatives have come to market themselves as leading figures in what we term the ‘responsible golf’ movement.

More than a study of golf-related institutional change, though, we also examine how it is that the golf industry has been so effective in some contexts in minimizing government regulation. We discuss, among other developments, the major and highly publicized legislation that was introduced by the provincial government in Ontario, Canada in 2008 – legislation that essentially banned pesticide use for cosmetic reasons across the province, except when used on golf courses. As we will note, Ontario is not alone in offering this exemption to golf. In this regard, we pursue questions on power relations and government policy, asking why it is that golf would receive ‘special status’ in recent legislation and what problems lie in forms of governance that give such latitude to industry.

Why single out golf?

Golf is a major global industry. Though estimates vary, it is generally assumed that more than 60 million people play golf worldwide, and that there are more than 32,000 courses across the globe in 140 countries (IBISWorld, 2008; Rees, 2008; Wheeler and Nauright, 2006). This includes courses in ‘emerging market’ regions of Africa and in countries such as Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Myanmar, and Afghanistan. Golf’s professional tournaments have been major spectator events for some time now, and the sport has also been extremely successful in attracting recreational golfers from a range of demographics (although it is still a sport that is most accessible to the wealthy). While in recent years wider economic problems have impacted the sport’s rate of growth, especially in North America (e.g. see Hutheesing, 2013; Lansner, 2013), the overall impact and presence of the industry remains immense.

Along with this success has come criticism. Concerns about golf’s potential impacts on the environment have come from many directions, as we explore in later chapters. Some argue that the chemicals used on golf courses have negative effects on wildlife and humans (although it is difficult to measure the precise risks), while others note the potentially negative implications of course construction for natural habitats, and the problem of excessive water usage in course irrigation (Kross et al., 1996; Kunimatsu et al., 1999; Mallin and Wheeler, 2000; Wheeler and Nauright, 2006; Winter et al., 2002). The golf industry has, over time, responded to these and other concerns in various ways. Most recently, as we shall see, a primary response tactic has been to stress the industry’s capacity for recognizing and dealing with environmental problems from within. Golf industry representatives are now self-professed environmental leaders.

There are, however, reasons to be sceptical about the golf industry’s proclaimed leadership on environmental issues – and, indeed, about corporate environmentalism in general. In broad terms, research conducted outside the golf industry on pro-environment measures adopted by major corporations has shown: (a) that these measures are in many cases attempts to prevent the government from implementing guidelines that might be more stringent (i.e. more environmentally responsible and economically inhibiting) than the ‘voluntary’ guidelines created and implemented by industry (Gibbons, 1999); (b) that industry, almost without exception, adopts a ‘sustainability’ approach to their environmental work – a not-uncontroversial approach that sees environmental progress and economic growth as compatible (Wilson and Millington, 2015); (c) that some industries overstate the extent to which they are, in fact, implementing pro-environment practices (i.e. they are greenwashing); and (d) that decisions to change environment-related practices within industries tend to be driven by a ‘cost-benefit’ analysis – where the economic costs of ‘going green’ are weighed against the legal and public relations costs of eschewing a corporate environmentalist agenda. This cost-benefit logic sits uncomfortably alongside the ‘precautionary’ approach to environment-related risks that is most often preferred by public health officials.

All of these concerns are pertinent to the case of the golf industry. Put simply, there are many unanswered questions about why and when environmentally questionable strategies for maintaining and constructing golf courses are considered necessary, who says they are necessary, who benefits from this form of risk taking, and who might be negatively affected. This book was written to address these questions and others; to address what we see as a gap in our understanding of the politics of the ‘greening of golf’.

What we did: background and research

The following chapters are based on information we collected as part of our ongoing research on corporate environmentalism and the golf industry. Our study included interviews with various stakeholders in the golf industry with a vested interest in environmental issues – in particular, representatives of influential health and environmental organizations and golf course superintendents from courses that have earned environmental certification from Audubon International, an independent organization. We also visited one of the very few ‘organic’ golf courses in North America (located in British Columbia, Canada) and the lone organic course in England, conducting in-depth interviews in both cases with course owners and superintendents. Also included herein is an analysis of published interviews with the head superintendent of the highly publicized Vineyard Golf Club in Edgartown, Massachusetts. This is an organic course too, one that US President Barack Obama has been known to play.

Our study also took us north of Aberdeen in the UK, where we met with members of the ‘Tripping up Trump’ resistance group, including its founder. This activist group protested the development of a golf course in Menie Estates because of both its environmental impacts and its effects on homeowners in the areas targeted for development. It was a high-profile case – unsurprisingly so, given celebrity businessman Donald Trump’s leadership in the course’s planning and development. Our research here included interviews with ‘Tripping up Trump’ group members as well as a ‘tour’ of the disputed areas around the course.

Beyond interviews and site visits, a main source of information for our study came from an in-depth analysis of trade publications produced for golf industry representatives in Canada and the United States. We drew especially from the publications GreenMaster (Canada) and Golf Course Management (USA), both directed towards golf superintendents, and from the United States Golf Association’s (USGA’s) Green Section family of publications, aimed towards a broader industry audience.¹ We found the information in these publications particularly informative in that they were written in large part “by golf industry members for golf industry members”. As such, these publications were in some respects more revealing than any of our interviews, as they detailed behind the scenes information about industry motivations and practices. We focus to a great extent on information from these publications from the 1960s to the present, recognizing that it was in the early 1960s when the environmental movement truly began. We do, however, also look back to industry trade documents from the early 1900s to help understand the full trajectory of golf’s environmental evolution. The publication The Golf Course – one laden with directives on how golf could modernize in the early twentieth century – is especially valuable in this regard. Finally, information from trade publications was supplemented by searches for newspaper coverage of golf-related environmental issues in the New York Times and major Canadian newspapers from 1962 to the present, and by a broader examination of key articles from other news media outlets around the world. Chapter 7 also contains analysis of government policies relevant to golf and the environment – in particular, the Cosmetic Pesticide Ban Act, recently instituted in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Although the interviews conducted for the study were mostly with stakeholders in the Canadian golf industry, overall the broader topics dealt with herein are international in their scope. The anti-golf and organic movements discussed in Chapters 8 and 9, respectively, are global movements. At the same time, strategies adopted by the golf industry for dealing with environment-related concerns are shared by industry members in various parts of the world. Questions about how and whether to regulate environment-related activities on golf courses are also being dealt with in many countries (though the case study featured in this book focuses on the Canadian context). Indeed, commentators around the world remain concerned about the problems and tensions that emerge when governments are mandated to both regulate the environmental impacts of industrial practices and, at the same time, promote economic growth without fail. All told, golf is now a global sport, and the environment a global issue. Any analysis of the two is bound to be wide reaching in its focus.

What is known about the health and environmental implications of golf?

While this book is mainly about how golf industry members, governments, and activists have responded to golf-related environmental issues, we acknowledge that our central arguments are based on the assumption that golf-related activities – namely the construction and maintenance of golf courses – pose potential threats to the health of humans and non-humans alike. We spend some time here, at the outset, establishing what is known and not known about these impacts. This discussion of existing research on the science of golf-related environmental impacts segues into our explanation of why it is that a sociological analysis of golf-related environmental issues is sorely needed.

We begin this overview by suggesting that, in some respects, our assumptions about golf’s potential and real impacts on the environment and public health are uncontroversial and straightforward. That is to say, in recent years members of the golf industry have readily admitted that some golf course development and maintenance practices have been and can be damaging if not carried out responsibly. This is the reason that industry members have, since the 1980s especially, actively positioned themselves as leaders when it comes to dealing with golf-related environmental issues. It is also well known that some chemicals that were previously used on golf courses (e.g. DDT) came to be seen as ‘too risky’ for use when considering the health of non-humans and/or humans, and have therefore been outlawed (see Chapter 5).

In this way, it is widely acknowledged that golf-related activities are potentially damaging to the environment. Differing views still exist, however, when it comes to questions about what has been ‘proven’, and what remains in doubt, in regards to the risks associated with chemicals still used on golf courses today. Related questions about whether and when golf courses might be environmentally friendly spaces (e.g. as wilderness and conservation areas), and when they might be viewed as the opposite (e.g. as disrupters/destroyers of ecosystems) are also relevant here, and are discussed below.

Chemicals, golf, and health

By the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s definition, a pesticide is a substance or mixture of substances...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of contents
• Series editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• Part I Introduction and tools for seeing golf sociologically
• Part II Background and history
• Part III The light-greening of golf
• Part IV The dark-greening of golf
• Part V Conclusion
• References
• Index