Shut the Golf Courses Down

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

The sport has come a long way from it’s Scots roots baby, to where it’s mostly just an eco disaster, stealing water, dumping chem lawn, and totally for fat drunk rich guys who can’t even walk around or carry their own clubs.

In Venezuela they’re doing something :

In Maracay, officials are considering building low-income homes on the golf course or turning it into a campus of Mr. Chávez’s Bolivarian University. In Caraballeda, plans are advancing to turn the course into a park for children.

Mr. Chávez, for his part, said he had no plans to outlaw golf. “I respect all sports,” he said. “But there are sports and there are sports. Do you mean to tell me this is a people’s sport?”

He then answered the question: “It is not.”

NYT

This is what golf has become in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (which was once a very unique and beautiful place, believe it or not) :

And this is what they did to a totally amazing and unique desert/sand dune/mangrove environment in Baja California–Punta El Mogote:

BEFORE:

AND:

AND: Another lovely part of El Mogote, showing black volcanic sand dunes and it’s still undeveloped  today :

AFTER:

Nice pants asshole.

Yes, it’s somewhat ironic that the image below is from a sports fisherman’s website–since they tore down the mangroves to build the golf course, there will now be less fish spawning.  But, sports fisherman are idiots, so nothing that surprising here.  The good news is that the Mogote development went broke, is gonna run off with the gringo money, and the next hurricane will wash the golf course, the condos, the cookie cutter houses–well the whole damn development out to sea, where it’ll be either a hazard to navigation, or a fish haven, or maybe both.

I guess if it becomes a fish haven it’s a win/win for the sporties–maybe they’re not so dumb after all.

16 comments

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  1. is that for now most of El Mogote is safe from bulldozers since the project went broke.

    It’s a very special place, as was ‘the rockpile’ in Myrtle Beach back a decade or two ago, before they tore out all the beautiful old trees, filled in all the lovely black water swamps, put golf cart bridges over the canal, and poured pesticides all over the place for good measure.    

  2. http://farm1.static.flickr.com

  3. “Let’s leave this clear,” Mr. Chávez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. “Golf is a bourgeois sport,” he said, repeating the word “bourgeois” as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on, mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport’s laziness.

    • pico on August 12, 2009 at 10:57

    First, I recommend it to everyone here: it’s one of the most insightful films about the shifting nature of communities – here a mix of mostly white and black, poor and middle class, trying to come to terms with rapid encroachment of big business – but Sayles brackets it with a Greek-chorus like group of golfers who brag about how they’ve tamed the wilderness and laid greens where there used to be marsh and alligators.  Given Sayles’ treatment of them, you can feel the irony dripping from the screen.  One of my favorite movies of the this decade.

  4. years ago, I was surprised to see alligators in some of the golf course’s water hazards. I was even more surprised when a visibly tipsy golfer stumbled part way down the embankment to one hazard and began poking an alligator with his golf club. After the guy’s shoe slipped a bit on the embankment, he retreated amid loud hissing from the really pissed-off alligator.

    This was early in the Reagan years. I was a lot younger then. Maybe I’ve become just a grouch or lost my sense of humor or something. But the potential benefit to society I now see in stocking certain golf course water hazards with aggressive, carnivorous reptiles, did not occur to me at the time.

  5. While there are many courses that are eco-disasters designed for the fat rich guys you are talking about, there are many more courses that are public courses, operated on a shoe string budget that are not eco disasters, and that are not the domain of the bourgeois. There are many courses where carts are not allowed. There is one course near where I live that has won multiple environmental awards for providing wildlife refuge, and for providing flood control in an environmentally friendly manner.

    I an 63, I play on a hilly course and carry my own clubs, in a bag on my back, not one of the little push/pull carts. I detest the motorized carts as an abomination on the sport. And make no mistake, it is a sport. The skill levels required to play the game at any level of competence are extreme and require a great deal of practice and thought. Sure there are a lot of fat, drunk guys that give the sport a bad name, but there are many more kids from disadvantaged circumstances playing the game on the courses I play.

    BTW, where is the “after picture” of the course built on Punta Mogote? the picture you provide is not from Punta Mogote, as there are no mountains out on that peninsula and your “after picture” shows mountains in the near distance. And how do you know that any one in that picture is an asshole, do you know any of them? What gives you the right to call someone you don’t even know an asshole. For all you know, any one of those guys might be an award winning cancer fighting doctor. That kind of demagoguery doesn’t do anyone any good, even if it does make you feel empowered. And your picture of Myrtle Beach is not a golf course, please don’t insult my intelligence. It may be a picture of a hotel or restaurant there, but that is not any hole on any golf course I have ever seen, unless it is one of the miniature golf type, but, then, I don’t see any windmills.

    As far as I am concerned, your screed against golf is a divisive, anger filled distraction from the over powering problem that is facing the world today-the fact that we as a species feel ourselves to be above and apart from the rest of the life force which I call Gaia. Compassion and understanding will do much more to resolve the problems humans have caused Gaia than anger and scorn.

  6. Golf Course Superintendents Face Higher Cancer Rates

    SOURCE: American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 29(5):501-506, 1996

    Working as a Golf Course Superintendent has been found to significantly increase the risk of dying of  four cancer types including – brain cancer, lymphoma (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, NHL), prostate and large intestine cancer. A study was conducted of 686 deceased members of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America from all U.S. states who died between 1970 and 1992.  Brain cancer rates for the Superintendents was found to occur at over twice the national average, while non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma also occurred at over twice the national average.  Prostate cancer occurred at nearly 3 times the national average and large intestinal cancer occurred at 1.75 times the national average.  The researchers stated that a similar pattern of elevated NHL, brain and prostate cancer mortality along with excess deaths from diseases of the nervous system has been noted previously among other occupational groups exposed to pesticides.

    Drs. Kross, B.C., Burneister, L.F., Ogilvie, L.K., Fuortes, L.J.,

    Department of Preventive Medicine Health, University of Iowa

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