How water restrictions can affect courses
Grass starts changing color
Let’s start with the obvious one: grass needs water to stay green. Anyone who’s ever had a lawn can tell you what happens when you forget to water it. That said, while even the most picturesque of California courses may not stay in pristine condition year round, you can still play golf with brown grass. Also, courses have developed methods of making sure that in times of water shortages, the most important areas (i.e. tees and greens) remain healthy.
Increased rates
Nobody likes to hear it, but the truth is the cost of keeping courses alive during a drought can incur significant costs. Whether it’s rising rates for water usage, increased maintenance to keep grass alive, or implementing methods to reduce water demand, it’s going to affect the bottom line. Ultimately, that could mean that your Saturday morning round just got a little pricier.
Reducing size
Here’s where things have the potential to get ugly. Given the difficulties of maintaining such large areas of land, some courses could decide that they need to make major changes to the layout to reduce their turf footprint. This could simply mean shortening or altering some holes, or it could mean getting rid of holes entirely.
Courses close
Worst case scenario. I’m not here to tell you that golf is going to cease to exist in Southern California any time in the near future. However, the reality is that there may be courses here and there that are simply unable to survive given the state’s current resources. Even if it’s not your home course or in your immediate area, losing a golf facility will result in increased play in a region where courses are already struggling to match the demand for golf.
How courses are combatting water shortages
Had enough doom and gloom? Me too. All of the things I just listed are a doomsday scenario for the unprepared. Fortunately, the drought is not news to course operators in California and they’ve spent years preparing for this exact moment.
Implementing high-tech irrigation systems
Golf courses have the highly sophisticated irrigation equipment and weather stations that determine exactly how much water the grass and soil needs at any given moment and the optimal time of day to activate the sprinklers. These systems also allow the grounds crew to target the areas of the course most in need of water and concentrate on keeping those areas hydrated. The target of these systems is to cut back water usage by 35%, which also may allow courses in certain areas to be exempt from further restrictions during periods of drought.
Removing unnecessary turf
Photo: OC Register
Many courses, especially those with large areas that are not typically in play for golfers, have opted to replace the turf in these areas with more drought-resistant plants or other materials that don’t require water. For example, in 2016 Los Robles Greens removed over 30 acres of turf from the facility and in doing so, dropped their water usage by over 20%.
