The Cost of Green: Golf Course Design and the Threat to Michigan’s Waterways

I was probably twelve years old when I stopped watching the ball and started analyzing the land. My father and grandfather had been taking me to the range since I could hold a club, but somewhere between those early morning sessions and the lit-up evening rounds, my curiosity shifted from the game itself to the ground it was played on. Playing golf competitively across the country, from the humidity-soaked fairways of South Carolina to the dry desert courses of Arizona, I began to notice how dramatically a course’s relationship with water and land changes by region. I was so fascinated by how each layout worked with (or against) the natural landscape that I started sketching course designs during class, and eventually built two full courses in Minecraft, routing holes around natural features. What I didn’t fully understand then was that the same design decisions I found so intriguing were also impacting something far beyond the course property: the health of the surrounding land and the water running beneath it.

The majority of golf courses are not natural landscapes. Maintaining the conditions that make a course playable requires a continuous cycle of chemical inputs that most golfers never think about. Firm putting surfaces, well-kept fairways, and weed-free rough all depend on regular applications of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers and pesticides to sustain the grass that, in most regions, is not native to the land it covers. When it rains, those chemicals don’t stay on the course. They move through drainage systems, seep into groundwater, and enter surrounding waterways, where excess amounts of nutrients can lead to algal blooms that disrupt aquatic ecosystems. The extent of that damage, however, is not constant or consistent. Emily Bock and Zachary Easton, researchers at Virginia Tech, found that well-managed courses can significantly reduce chemical runoff through responsible turf management practices. The difference between a harmful course and responsibility comes down to decisions made in the design and management of the course itself.

Michigan has more public golf courses than any other state in the country, making it one of the most golf-dense states in the nation. That scale matters environmentally because those courses do not sit in isolation. These courses sit within the Great Lakes watershed, the largest freshwater system in the world, holding approximately one-fifth of the world’s fresh surface water and serving as the drinking water source for more than 40 million people. Public courses, many of which are operated as small, family-owned properties, often lack the resources of larger private clubs to implement responsible chemical management practices. When fertilizer runoff leaves those courses, it does not disappear. It enters a watershed that millions of people and countless aquatic species depend on. When the volume of golf courses is this high, and the watershed is that significant, the consequences of poor chemical management extend far beyond the golf course itself.

The golf industry is not entirely ignoring its environmental responsibility. Voluntary frameworks like the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program and the Golf Environment Organization’s certification standards give courses a roadmap for reducing chemical use, conserving water, and managing wildlife habitats more responsibly. But voluntary participation has its limits, and certification applied after construction can only do so much when the foundational decisions have already been made. The courses that will matter most to the future of the Great Lakes watershed are not the ones chasing certification after the fact; they are the ones being designed right now, and the choices being made at the drawing board will determine Michigan’s water quality for decades to come. Growing up, I never thought about what it took to keep a fairway or a putting surface firm: I just played it. But the more I studied the relationship between golf and the land it occupies, the clearer it became that the game I love has a responsibility it has not yet fully accepted. That starts with design.