Golf Course Architecture - Issue 65, July 2021

WELCOME 1 ADAM LAWRENCE The post-Covid boom? I n this issue, we look at the way golf has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic, and specifically how, around the world, golf courses have been full to bursting since reopening from their forced closure. The reason, according to Rob Day of masterplanners WATG, is that being locked down for months on end has made people crave the outdoors – and golf, as a leading outdoor activity, has been in the front line of that. The pandemic, which has shut down much of the world for over a year, has given the golf industry the opportunity of a historic reset. For most of the sixteen years we have been publishing GCA , golf has been in a slow but steady decline in its core markets. Now, there is optimism, though it is tinged with an inevitable sense of disbelief at the way it has arisen. It remains unclear whether the revival of golf caused because of Covid will translate into any sort of building boom. There is, to be sure, quite a lot of slack capacity that can absorb growth in demand, before there is any significant need for new facilities. But it is not unreasonable to suggest that where there is optimism, investment might follow. Will Covid bring about changes in the way architects design and renovate courses? I think it may. It is not just the outdoors that people seem to be valuing now; it is time spent away from ‘civilisation’, with all its strains and stresses, and in nature. As such, the wholly artificial, manicured golf course, which has seemed already to be falling out of favour, at least in parts of the world, is even more out of place now than it was PC (Pre-Covid). Golf courses that look and feel ‘natural’, of course, may not always actually be as natural as they appear. Producing good surfaces for play requires greenkeepers to deploy methods that may not always be desperately natural. And not every site has that much natural feature to recommend it. But mimicking nature is well within the capacity of golf architects and course managers. I suspect this will be the way forward for the game as we put the pandemic behind us.