The original game as invented by bored semi-drunk Scots was, I’m sure, a good laugh several hundred years ago with wee sticks and a random round thing.
The modern game and all its hideous capitalist/ classist cultural connotations is fucked.
The original game as invented by bored semi-drunk Scots was, I’m sure, a good laugh several hundred years ago with wee sticks and a random round thing.
Robin Williams did a great bit on this.
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Good Bot!
The golf course near me has spent the last month about a foot underwater.
I have never been so smug. I hope it’s ruined.
every golf course could be a lovely botanical garden/park or arboretum, with little paths every which way and carefully crafted scenery to make you feel like you’re inside a disney movie
You see this?
I used to hike along the coast there quite regularly but someone decided it was much better to turn the whole thing into a gulf course and to illegally block access to locals.
Edit: Of course they also chose the driest part of the island.
Maybe they should be on the lookout for people pouring cement into the golf holes.
Where is this? California has strict regulations about the actual beach access. So e.g. Pebble Beach is in one of the most beautiful locations in all of Northern California, ridiculously expensive and nearly impossible to play as a mortal, but you can still go drive around 17 mile drive through the course and walk along the coastal trails for free.
It’s in st Lucia in the Caribbean.
There is regulations for beach access too here where all the coastline need to be accessible to the public.
So far with this particular resort they are doing everything they can to discourage people from coming in and showed a strong disdain for the local community.
AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING ON EACH SIDE. Seattle estimated they could solve the housing crisis by closing a handful of their muni courses (leaving multiple municipal and a dozen private courses in the area) and building medium density housing there. Solving a critical need by getting rid of a few locations for a dying sport:
https://www.theurbanist.org/2019/06/12/unlike-seattle-golf-really-is-dying/
It’s a waste of space otherwise.
Wait until you hear about the laws in place that guarantee them access to water their fields no matter the drought. Nobody has heard of an unkempt golf course.
So… I actually really like golf. I think it’s fun. Haven’t played in over a decade, but I look back on my memories playing pretty fondly.
That said, I have zero issue recovering a lot of that lost land and water usage to put them to better use.
I’d be very interested to see a version of golf that is less ecologically destructive and less water intensive.
There’s other sports that are just as bad. the NFL is terrible for the environment and for the players’ neurology.
Las Vegas has something like 70 golf courses wasting inordinate amounts of water. Of course most houses also have outside private swimming pools too.
Vegas actually is a poor example, they have excellent water management policy even in spite of what is typically considered wasteful. Being so far down the Colorado River Basin kinda made being experts on the subject a necessity.
Of course it has excellent water management because otherwise they’d run out. Doesn’t mean that everyone having pools and so many golf courses is anyway defensible, or doesn’t put insane stress on the supply.
I don’t think they’re saying golf courses in the desert are defensible. I think they’re saying that Nevada does better water conservation job than other nearby states (I believe Utah is the worst per capita) and has not nearly as much impact on the colorado river, so there’s probably bigger fish to go after in terms of saving water than Las Vegas. When you get down to it like >80% of the water use out west is agriculture. If you’re going to make significant savings you have to tackle agriculture practices. Not that you shouldn’t clamp down on the golf courses too (I totally think they should, just deal with the artificial turf golfers if you want to golf in the middle of an arid desert and go golf in the scottish highlands if you want real grass), it just probably wouldn’t help all that much in the grand scheme of things even if golf courses didn’t exist at all. Surprisingly the best thing to do to conserve water would be to reduce meat consumption, most of what’s grown is for livestock feed not human consumption.
I know this thread is a bit old, but I used to be an irrigation tech at a 27 hole golf course. Just wanted to throw some numbers out there for anyone interested. This was in a hot climate for reference. During the wet season, we would pump out anywhere from 200,000 gallons to 600,000 of water per night. During the summer or droughts, we would pump 750,000-1,500,000 gallons of water PER NIGHT. During the day, especially during droughts, I had to go around spot watering everything all day. I could easily pump 150,000 gallons during the day on top of what we pumped at night. During a hot week with no rain, our average was around 10.5 million gallons of water. Our course used “reclaimed water” but the majority of the water was supplemented by the city supply. We only got the reclaim license because of some favors and shady deals to lower our taxes.
IMHO sport is a misnomer. “Game” seems more fitting to me.
I’m always interested in this take. By definition,.it’s clearly a sport.
How do you define sport and how does it not meet the definition? It’s a game of physical skill, mental concentration, and competition.
I have always viewed it as a sport involves and active defensive player and an overall greater level of physical movement
Motorsports have no defensive player and do not involve much physical movement (unless you count the car’s movement).
Giving a cat a bath involves a defensive player (the cat) and significant physical movement (depends on the cat’s mood).
Two golf courses nearby have closed down and are being rehabilitated by the National Park that claimed the land or however they got it. IIRC one of them was family-owned for four generations, but the last owner was in his mid-twenties and got in way over his head, and committed suicide on one of the greens.
Sucks about the circumstances, but otherwise I love to see it
I just don’t understand the need for so many courses, I played golf as a kid on the same one for 10 years, the local environment allowed it to maintain itself for the most part.
Devil’s advocate, in a dense suburban setting it keeps that land from being paved over and turned into a commercial zone. But when it is in a rural setting, absolutely.
Well, I recently learned of the existence of Excel competitions, so I’m not sure about the ‘most boring’ part.
Some people really excel at spreadsheets.
Mini-golf is actually kind of fun.
Not just that, but I found a few golf courses in my city where natural habitats used to be. These place could have easily been changed into nature parks for the local residents to go wind down a bit, but noooOOOooo. Some rich assholes had to buy the land and destroy the ecosystem so they could whack a ball around some fucking grass into a little hole.
