ST. ANDREWS, Scotland – It’s the rare golfer who doesn’t worry about the weather that can wash out a round or starve long shots.
But along the North Sea on a rambunctious edge of Scotland, heralded for centuries as the birthplace of golf, the greenskeepers of this era fear a far more damning prophecy. In that nightmare, what they call a perfect storm, hitting at high tide and grabbing an easterly wind, would strike, likely accelerating coastal erosion.
“Year after year, we’re just worried,” said David Brown, the general manager of the 460-year-old Montrose Golf Links.
“You’re actually fighting the unknown,” he said. “We couldn’t have that perfect storm for the next 10 years, and then quite easily in one winter, we could have that perfect storm three times. And how much land would we lose?”
Montrose, which the government estimates has lost tens of meters of coastline in recent decades, is considered one of the most endangered of Scotland’s 600 or so jobs, with more than one in six on the coast. As a sign of how world prestige can only provide so much security, researchers believe St Andrews, home to the world’s oldest track and host of the 150th British Open, has a greater threat of flooding inland. 30 years.
Scientists don’t think the Old Course will be permanently submerged so soon, with the road hole swallowed up in the sea forever. But golf had little choice but to weigh in on its own role climate change – particularly by the vast, lush and thirsty courses that sometimes take the place of trees and then require fertilizer and mowing – while wondering how to preserve fairways and greens around the world.
For years, scientists have warned how a warmer planet, which could lead to more severe storms and more sea-level rise, could switch sports. Citing climate change, the president of the International Olympic Committee has said the organizers of the Games “may need to look at the general calendar and see if there should be a shift.” Winter sports are facing a future of events on artificial snow, and activities such as dog sledding and fishing are being transformed in the Arctic.
Golf will be no exception.
“Some of our most historic, famous and respected golf courses are at risk, and it’s something every coastal course should think carefully about,” said Tim Lobb, the president of the European Institute of Golf Course Architects, who predicted an acceleration of the kind of turf reduction efforts. which has already started in some courses.
Scotland’s long embrace of golf as a cultural and economic juggernaut gives the issue a particular urgency in this region, where the Open is expected to end on Sunday. On St Andrews Links alone, six public courses, including the Old Course, take up some 230,000 rounds a year close to the West Sands, a short walk from some of the most respected holes in the world. (A seventh St. Andrews Links course, which opened in 2008, is located elsewhere in the area.)
It is generally believed that the runways in eastern Scotland, with low-lying sediment that can be easily eroded, are more at risk than those along the west coast, where the geology is less vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
But the reactions are becoming widespread.
A much-loved course in the north of Scotland, Royal Dornoch has attempted to revive swamp that had eroded and threatened a navigation channel. Lundin, about half an hour’s drive from St Andrews, added £100,000 worth of fencing to protect against erosion, and the Open’s organizer R&A has set aside hundreds of thousands of pounds for grants to “develop solutions”.
There may be limits to what courses can do, though sometimes their options are limited by money, location, the severity of the threat, or the rippling consequences of action in one area. Some people worry that resources made available to a place like the Old Course, which is rich in history and international imports, may not be as accessible elsewhere.
“There are fears about golf courses, but we will help protect golf courses if we do the right things to protect the environment and mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change,” Scotland’s Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon said in a statement. interview by the sea. on Friday. “There is a tremendous amount of work we are doing in Scotland to do that. It’s about more than protecting golf courses, but in places like this, that’s certainly an important part of it.”
She added: “The climate is changing, but in Scotland we are really focused on protecting what matters most to us as we face these challenges. And it’s very clear, especially at this week of the year, how important golf is to Scotland.”
Some experts, including Professor Bill Austin of the University of St Andrews, expect an increasing number of engineering repairs to take place over the years, balancing more natural solutions that allow the sea to sneak in in a controlled manner.
One of the persistent questions, however, is whether those efforts will happen soon enough.
At Montrose, Brown runs a lately slumped course, voluntarily and not: tees have been lost, holes have been shortened and rerouted and fairways overseeded. However, there is only so much money to make ends meet, and climate-related adaptations consume about a third of the job’s green budget.
“Without government protection, we could see 50 years of golf playing comfortably — or the perfect storm two or three times in one winter, 10 years,” he said.
The concerns around St. Andrews are not so great yet, but they are increasing. In a particularly grim possibility outlined last year in a report from a Scottish government projectpart of the West Sands could pull about 750 meters into the links by 2100 if there is high emissions and a ‘do nothing’ approach to coastal management.
And Climate Central, a research group based in Princeton, NJ, has predicted that by 2050 the Old Course and the surrounding area will become more susceptible to temporary, albeit sodden, flooding.
Austin, based in the School of Geography and Sustainable Development in St Andrews, also expects flooding to threaten the Old Course and said breaches “could be unavoidable.” Further improvements to the dunes, especially around the end of the estuary, could potentially better protect the track, he said, building on years of work St Andrews Links has already done.
The government report also suggested beach nourishment efforts and the opportunity to redesign courses “to ensure that golf can be played sustainably in St Andrews after 2100.”
Exactly how long is not clear.
“I’m sure there will be a 200th Open played on something very similar to the current Old Course, but there could be some engineering behind the scenes,” Austin, who has received some research funding from the R&A, said at a coffeehouse in St Andrews on a rainy morning last week.
Beyond that, however, his prognosis is more ominous.
“If you asked me about 300 I’d say the Old Course will have moved,” he said, “but there will still be something in St Andrews that has the feel and, I think, the legacy of the Old Course has.”