news-record.com

They are among our most beautiful pieces of land, historic layouts that meander through 150-year-old trees and alongside brooks and streams. We have more than 550 golf courses here in North Carolina, more than any state but three.

Some 72 are within an hour’s drive from Greensboro.

We spend millions playing the game, buying the equipment and paying for the maintenance required to keep the courses modernized and in perfect playing condition. And in recent years, an effort has begun to make golf courses more environmentally safe.

At first glance, a pristine fairway stretching across an emerald vista would seem the most natural and environmentally pleasant scene.

But under the beauty of a modern golf course is the reality that science, more than nature, is responsible for the brilliant green and familiar rolling terrain that characterize the pine-lined courses of North Carolina.

Fertilizers and laboratory-designed strains of grass create never-before-seen lawns that weather storms, withstand heat, repel insects and disease and make golf balls sit up nicely for a golfer looking to hit a fairway iron from a perfect lie. The ground under his soft-spiked shoes is literally a lab experiment that went unchecked for years before experts realized the beauty came with a cost.

We were polluting the brooks and streams, damaging the pines and altering nature instead of helping it. Chemical residue ended up in the groundwater and, eventually, our drinking water.

In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency outlawed the use of chemicals found hazardous to bird populations and began studying the uses of non-potable water still used by some courses in America. It has become a delicate balancing act between the preservation of the land for all of nature and the specific use of the land for leisure.

Although some studies show golf courses having detrimental effects on things such as animal migration, others show intrinsic benefits of golf courses as opposed to parking lots. The modern course superintendent is aware of all these issues and, more times than not, is more of an expert on the environment than he is the golf swing.

One of the first golf courses built in North Carolina was Greensboro Country Club, designed in 1911 when a Scotsman named Donald Ross cut the course from the rolling woods with teams of mules and wooden plows.

There are more than 550 in our state now, and they remain one of our most important attractions. They are also being studied more than ever as we consider the effects of man vs. nature .

The natural beauty of a golf course requires tinkering with the natural flow of the Earth, but so does farming and the damming of rivers and even building parks and arboretums and greenways. As with most things, common sense usually is the best approach.

We’ve been playing golf in North Carolina since 1895, when the first course was built in Linville. That golf course is still there. And so are the mountains around it.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com