Oil prices Impacting Golfers

From today's New Zealand Herald; The time is coming when golfers will have to choose - pay more to cover the increasing cost of oil or play on scruffier courses with longer grass?

That's the conundrum posed by the New Zealand Sports Turf Institute in the latest New Zealand Golf Update. Their fact sheet reinforces that golf, more than any other sport, will have to make significant adjustments.

Maintenance and grooming of grassed properties at least 40ha, means machinery fuel, fertilisers, pesticides and other chemicals, many of which are oil-based.

The Sports Turf Institute has taken a pragmatic view. Firstly, it asks if all the course, especially areas not intended for play, really need to be mowed and maintained. It suggests some areas off the fairway, well away from where you're supposed to hit the ball, could be re-vegetated with cluster planting of native species requiring no further maintenance. It may make the course more difficult to play - but is that a bad thing?