FORE Magazine

Top Menu

  • About Me
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Home

Main Menu

  • Current Issue
  • Profiles
  • Sustainability
  • Travel
  • 19th Hole
  • Classic Course
  • FORE Her
  • More
    • Know the Rules
    • Handicap Hints
    • SCGA Junior
    • Where Are They Now?
    • News
    • Public Affairs
  • scga.org
Sign in / Join

Login

Welcome! Login in to your account
Lost your password?

Lost Password

Back to login

logo

FORE Magazine

  • Current Issue
  • Profiles
  • Sustainability
  • Travel
  • 19th Hole
  • Classic Course
  • FORE Her
  • More
    • Know the Rules
    • Handicap Hints
    • SCGA Junior
    • Where Are They Now?
    • News
    • Public Affairs
  • scga.org
Fall 2021Public AffairsSustainability
Home›Issues›Fall 2021›Getting to the Root of the Problem: It’s the Land, Stupid!

Getting to the Root of the Problem: It’s the Land, Stupid!

By Craig Kessler
October 27, 2021
995
0
Share:

Too much land that uses too much water to serve the too few who have received too much for too long from the too many who have more pressing needs.

That’s the way too much of the 91 percent of the population that doesn’t play golf thinks about the nine percent of us who do — pampered elites who encumber a disproportionate share of the common green space and the water necessary to keep it uncommonly pristine.

Is this a crude caricature? A gross distortion? A set of misconceptions practically rising to the level of a libel?

It’s all of that and more!The facts may favor us. But a simple recitation of facts to audiences not disposed to listening to them, or worse, to audiences whose minds are already made up to the contrary, won’t move this particular needle. Words have their place, but words alone soon become empty if that’s all one has to offer.

COVETING GOLF’S PROPERTY

It takes consistent attention on the consequences of the distorted lens placed upon the game, but more than that, it takes actions in support of a community value proposition that is as compelling to the game’s adherents as it is to those who are not inclined to ever put a golf club in their hand. Sermons about diversity, inclusion, equity, environmental sustainability, ecological integrity, health and character development ring hollow if not accompanied by concrete actions in support thereof. So do paeans to good intentions.

Before suggesting what some of those “concrete actions” might be, let’s get one thing straight up front. It’s the land, stupid! All of the game’s challenges are related to how much acreage it takes to provide a golf course. Whether it’s Assembly Member Cristina Garcia’s proposal to chop the state’s municipal golf courses into affordable housing tracts (AB 672), or certain environmentalists’ refrain about the game’s “frivolous” use of water, or Malcom Gladwell’s pique at the game’s property tax basis, or the canard about the “elite” nature of the game, the common denominator is the land the game encumbers.

It’s not the game or the game’s practitioners; it’s the land. And because of that fact – and yes, it’s a fact – golf has to work just that much harder to sell its societal value proposition than do other recreational and entertainment pursuits. If golf could be played on a bocce ball court, a tennis court, a soccer field, a baseball diamond, a pickleball court, a football field or any of the many other recreational activities that are easily pursued on a handful of acres, no one would care about who we are, what we do, how we do it, or who we do it with. And they certainly wouldn’t be coveting golf’s property for their preferred uses, whether recreational, residential or commercial.

WHETHER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE, IT BEHOOVES ALL SPECIES OF GOLF CLUB TO PERFORM ACTS OF PUBLIC SERVICE, INCLUDING ACTS OF CHARITY, IN THE SAME WAY THAT BUSINESSES ROUTINELY DO THEM.”

So, what’s a golf community thus challenged to do? The short answer is anything and everything capable of stitching golf courses into the fabric of the communities they inhabit in a way that causes those in the community who don’t golf to treasure their local golf course enough to think it’s worth keeping when someone comes along to suggest it be repurposed for a higher, better or different use, which, of course, can mean very different things in different communities.

But in every community, it means something. The trick is figuring what it means in each instance and then getting down to making it part of that golf course’s value proposition.

If the subject golf property is an urban municipal facility, the “community links” principles employed by golf course architects like Andy Staples and Forrest Richardson in the far West have proven up to the task by stitching much of the golf functionality so deeply into the functionality that supports other recreational and entertainment uses that it becomes impossible to deconstruct them without upending both, inextricably intertwining their fates, as it were.

Of course, that requires buy-in from a golf community often set in its ways. But when the choice is a binary one between collaborative coexistence and extinction, most golf communities make the right choice.

ACTS OF PUBLIC SERVICE

If the subject property is a daily-fee facility or private club, making sure that everything you do, suggest and/or support is consistent with a stance that obviates all hint of the elite aloofness that so many believe about you. Make sure that when attentions inevitably turn to drought and good environmental citizenship you are swimming with the political and social currents and not against them; that way, you’ll be indulged when trying to fashion those currents ever so slightly in your direction. Crash into those currents, and again, there’s that elite aloofness problem that causes so much collateral damage.

Whether public or private, it behooves all species of golf club to perform acts of public service, including acts of charity, in the same way that businesses routinely do them. Nothing can make it clearer that golf clubs and golf facilities consider themselves but small parts of a greater interdependent community as opposed to islands unto themselves.  Beyond the individual to the much more impactful collective, if you’re one of the game’s leadership organizations or one of the game’s advocacy alliances like the California Alliance for Golf (CAG), understand that every position you take, every initiative you pursue and every word you utter will be judged by a world predisposed to believe much of the incendiary rhetoric at the top of this story. The actions you take will count for much more than the words you utter, and to the degree to which your actions contradict your words, you will have confirmed the worst that many believe about the game.

Whether municipal, daily fee, private, individual or collective, always remember that it is to the 91 percent who don’t play golf that the game’s actions and narratives must be addressed. How they understand what golf does and how it does it will determine how the game fares when its claim to its acreage is challenged.

The converted, the nine percent who play the game, require no preaching, but most of them are affiliated in one way or another with one of the game’s leadership organizations. It is to these leadership organizations that the task of preaching to the unconverted falls. How they execute it will decide whether golf shrinks or grows.

***

That’s the root of the problem. As for solutions more specific than the generalizations provided here, that’s the subject of another story much longer than this one. But if you want to get a flavor of how the SCGA very specifically posits a public narrative that hews to the generic rules and mandates summarized here, go to the Governmental Affairs Hub.

Previous Article

Myth Busting: Who You Gonna Call?

Next Article

Farewell, My Lovely: Will the 2023 U.S. ...

0
Shares
  • 0
  • +
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Craig Kessler

Craig came to the SCGA via the merger with the Public Links Golf Association (PLGA), where he served as Executive Director for 11 years and pioneered the development of the nation’s most active and accomplished advocacy component. He has been tasked with doing the same for the SCGA as its first Director of Governmental Affairs, albeit on a much larger stage. In addition to his current and previous job responsibilities, Craig has served as a USGA Committeemen continuously for 15 years, Chair of the Los Angeles Golf Advisory Commission, Chair of the Los Angeles County Golf Advisory Committee, Member of the City of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park Master Plan Board, Member of the Ventura Golf Advisory Group, Member of the Los Angeles County Junior Golf Foundation Board of Directors and Chair of the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce First Tee of Los Angeles Advisory Committee. In 2008 Craig was inducted into the Long Beach Golf Hall of Fame.

Related articles More from author

  • Public AffairsWinter 2017

    A Miserable Year for Politics, a Great Year for Golf

    February 15, 2017
    By Craig Kessler
  • Fall 2016Public Affairs

    Lessons from the Drought “Emergency”: A funny thing happened on the way to the apocalypse.

    October 24, 2016
    By Craig Kessler
  • Fall 2021Travel

    Quiet Jewels: Five Destinations that Fly Under the Radar

    November 2, 2021
    By Joe Passov
  • Fall 2021Profiles

    One Nation Under Golf: New Apparel Company Swings to the Past

    October 27, 2021
    By Judd Spicer
  • Fall 2021The Podium

    Farewell, My Lovely: Will the 2023 U.S. Open Be SoCal’s Curtain Call?

    October 29, 2021
    By John Strege
  • Public Affairs

    Golf Celebrates the Fruits of Research at UC Riverside Turfgrass Field Day

    September 17, 2018
    By Craig Kessler

Leave a reply Cancel reply

Recent Posts

  • FeaturedGolf GroupsSpring 2022

    Wednesday Special: San Diego’s Hookers And Slicers Celebrate 50 Years

  • FeaturedSpring 2022Sustainability

    Jewel in the Middle of Nowhere: Death Valley’s Furnace Creek GC Ramps Up Sustainability Efforts

  • Classic CourseFeaturedSpring 2022

    Western Home of Golf: Legends, Legacy and Looking Forward at PGA WEST

  • FeaturedSpring 2022Travel

    Scotland Must-Plays & Hidden Gems: 10 Terrific Tracks that Prove the Old Course Isn’t the Only Game Around

  • FeaturedProfilesSpring 2022

    Bootstrap Golf: The Long Expedition of David Lipsky

FeaturedSpring 2022Travel

The Pubs of St Andrews

The challenge seemed daunting at first. On an eight-day trip to St Andrews, my job was to rate the pubs in this lively college town where golf began six centuries ...
  • Scotland Must-Plays & Hidden Gems: 10 Terrific Tracks that Prove the Old Course Isn’t the Only Game Around

    By Joe Passov
    April 21, 2022
  • Bob Does Hollywood: The Hardest Working Man on Instagram Finds Gold in Golf

    By Adam Hawk
    April 21, 2022
  • Not Your Father’s Game: With Two Facilities Newly Open and Callaway at the Helm, the Topgolf Explosion Comes to the Southland

    By Scott Kauffman
    April 21, 2022
  • The Provisional Ball: What? How? When?

    By Jimmy Becker
    April 21, 2022
© 2016 FORE Magazine About Us | Contact Us | Advertise