Golf Course Architecture - Issue 66, October 2021

51 addressing this issue, with little or no guidance coming from the golfing authorities as yet. “It does surprise me that the USGA has done nothing on exploring alternatives to sand – or for that matter peat,” he says. “‘Heads in the sand’ is an easy phrase to use, but frankly it isn’t that far from the truth. Topdressing is what we see as creating the largest carbon footprint for golf courses in the future. It’s the diesel they’re burning trucking in sand week after week. It may be that greenkeepers in some locations will need to be prepared to be a little more f lexible about exactly what sort of sand they will use to topdress with. If we need to import sand, the closer to the site that we can find a quarry – even if the sand doesn’t quite match the specifications you wanted – the better. Can we ameliorate non-conforming sands to a point that they will do what we need them to? If all we have is dune sand, what do we need to add to it to make a mix that works for us? But if you ask clubs, ‘what are you going to do in thirty years?’ people do turn a little pale. A lot of agronomists are very conservative – they still tend to err on the side of caution and are afraid to advise the client to do something different. Now that said, I cannot think of any large-scale alternatives to sand that would work for golf. Slag from iron and steelworks is being used as a replacement for gravel, but not for sand. There is some interest in grinding down recycled glass to use it as a sand replacement – certainly in the Middle East there has been discussion about this – but it is hard to see it providing sand in the quantities that are used by courses.” Although in terms of overall consumption it is dwarfed by topdressing, the biggest single use of sand that any course will ever make is to cap the site to improve drainage. David Cole, director of golf course and estate at the exclusive Loch Lomond Golf Club in Scotland has recently completed a massive project to sandcap the course, which has always had chronic drainage problems (for more on this project, see the January 2020 issue of GCA ). “We used Photos: Loch Lomond Golf Club