Being on "vacation" while my spouse was working a convention at a Central Florida resort with a golf course attached, you might think I would have been unable to avoid the event. Indeed, it seemed that every publicly available television in the resort was on the Open, but the crowds gathered around it at every such television dissuaded me from trying to look in on it.
As far as I can tell, there are two major takeaways from the event, one of which might just edge into this blog's territory: (1) the winner of the Masters also won the Open, which means there's still whatever slight chance of a golfing Grand Slam alive for this season; and (2) apparently a number of the event's participants were highly critical of the condition of the course.
At least two of the participants went off on the conditions of the course, in particular the greens, after the event was done. Others responded, when questioned, with negative assessments of the course and greens, comparing them to broccoli, or dirt, or simply calling them dead.
Now, I'm not much of a golfer; it's been years since I played at all. Neither is golf the first sport I look for when kicking back in front of the television for some mental down time in front of a game of some sort. I do pay enough attention to keep up with who's winning and who's sliding, and to know that Tiger Woods isn't doing much these days.
Still, I find it very, um, interesting that this is the big story coming out of the US Open, even more in some corners than Jordan Spieth's half-Slam. Now I get that golf is in fact a physically demanding game on the professional level, and difficult course conditions make a pro golfer's job harder. Still, it might be juuuuuust a little lame to be so, well, bitchy about the grass.
In case you've forgotten (or in case you thought it was just California), Washington state (the site of this year's Open) is experiencing a pretty stiff drought these days. Yes, California and its disappearing lakes and nonexistent snowpack gets all the ink, and before it was drowned Texas had the drought headlines pretty well locked up, but Washington is in the midst of conditions the state simply isn't accustomed to.
I do not know what strictures the USGA might have been facing in preparing the Chambers Bay course for the competition. But in a state with a missing snowpack and increasingly skimpy water supplies, and an exceptionally hot summer looming, carping about brown greens by a bunch of fairly privileged athletes doesn't look very sympathetic.
Where this provokes my curiosity most, however, is what such might mean for the future of this sport, so water-dependent as it is. Is it possible, in a world with a broken climate (and don't argue about the faith component of this topic; no less than the Pope has you nailed on this one), can a sport like golf survive?
You might be thinking of other sports that would seem more subject to trouble in a climate-change age -- auto racing, for example, with all that fuel being burned. True, that's going to be a tough sell, but with that sport there is at least the possibility of running those cars on a fuel that has less deleterious effects (and I'd be shocked if the major auto racing bodies aren't already looking into such possibilities). Onerous and nasty as it is to do, outdoor sports like baseball, football, or soccer can be played on artificial turf if absolutely necessary. What exactly does golf do if the water dries up?
This seems like an out-there question, but maybe it isn't. Does the sport become more limited when municipalities decide that water for drinking is more important than water for lush greens? Do we end up with courses only in "wet" places? Who decides these things? What kind of underhanded deals do golf courses make to keep their greens green and their fairways appealing? You get the idea, I hope.
I have no answers here. This is a lot more speculative than many posts here, but that doesn't mean that the question doesn't have at least the potential to become serious. Is it possible that, in the name of a faithful and ethical concern for creation, it might become necessary for golf to, well, dry up?
This might have been as much as a year before the Open.
Credit: pga.com
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