Two hundred seventy-five courses have achieved the coveted AI
certification, meeting criteria for environmental planning, wildlife and
habitat management, pest management, water quality and water
conservation.
According to Joellen Zeh, AI Staff Ecologist, "Since 1991, we have had
a steady increase in interest from established golf clubs and those in
design. The superintendents I work with are lovers of the outdoors and
very positive about protecting the environment. In a recent managed land
survey, ninety-nine percent of them said that their turf is in the same
or better condition, after instituting water conservation and integrated
pest programs, and almost half believe their turf to be better than
ever.
"They tell us that their golfers are appreciative of what the clubs are
doing to expand wildlife habitat. The average golfer on an AI-certified
course will notice more birds, butterflies and other wildlife, and
likely, higher rough, with wide buffers of native grasses and other
natural flora around water features."
Sand dunes and wetlands on The Links at Spanish Bay are fringed with
native plants, which act as natural water filters and protect fragile
dunes from golfers' footsteps. In a spectacular oceanside site on
Monterey Bay at Pebble Beach, Spanish Bay was the first California
course to be certified by AI. In the lee of the brooding Del Monte
cypress forest, the layout is marked by waves of low, sandy mounds,
fescue grass fairways and few trees, with blue and yellow lupine, sage
and thistle supplying soft color against the dazzling blue Pacific,
which borders all but four holes.
The original Robert Trent Jones, Jr./Tom Watson plan involved
extensive dune restoration and the replacement of native plantings. A
fearsome slope of rating of 74.8/146 and true Scottish links conditions
test the golfer's mettle , with windswept dunes up to twenty-four feet
high, platoons of merciless pot bunkers, often damp, cool weather and
prevailing sea winds.
Called "Missing Link", the fifteenth hole demands true target golf,
with a landing area and a green completely surrounded by gorse and
dunes, and a marsh and tall reeds to the right of the green, a perfect
hiding place for herons and egrets. Dunescape carries are also required
on 417-yard "Whale Watch", the seventeenth, draped right along the
ocean, within view of sea otters floating in the kelp beds offshore. If
the sun is setting when golfers reach the eighteenth, they will hear the
eerie keen of a kilted bagpiper as he makes his nightly rounds. As Tom
Watson said, "Spanish Bay is so much like Scotland, you can almost hear
the bagpipes."
Developers and designers of new courses run a gauntlet of environmental
impact restrictions. Ten years of negotiations preceded approval of
Squaw Creek Golf Course, an AI certified club in Squaw Valley near Lake
Tahoe. Surrounded by the Tahoe National Forest in the Sierra Nevada
Mountain Range, the valley is covered with a magical alpine meadow and
wetlands, lush with wildflowers and crisscrossed by Squaw Creek. No
fungicides, insecticides or herbicides are used on the course, and
fertilizers are restricted. Architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr., took the
creek and the underground aquifer into account by having charcoal
filters installed under the greens and buffering the creek and three
ponds with several feet of native grasses. With only eighty playable
acres, landing zones are small. Wooden cart paths protect the fragile
meadows.
At 6,500 feet elevation, spring golf starts on Memorial Day weekend,
after shovels, snowblowers and rakes have carefully removed the last
foot of snow. Perpetual sunshine makes Southern California's Coachella Valley a golf
mecca, with more than a hundred courses. The more recently they were
designed, the more skillfully united with the desert they are. Using
fewer acres of the perfect turf typical of most Western courses,
Mountain View and Firecliff at Desert Willow Golf Resort in the city of
Palm Desert are carpeted with natural vegetation, and huge sand and
crushed granite waste bunkers guarded by magnificent palm groves and red
and golden barrel cactus. Firecliff is the brainchild of architect,
Michael Hurdzan, who ingeniously shaped the holes to echo the
surrounding dunes and existing flora, complying with the city's demands
for a minimum of irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides. He said, "it
is the most important project of my life... here, golfers will know
they have been in the desert."