Are U.S. golf courses too green? (1/4ページ)

Tim Liddy spent a considerable chunk of 2005 and early 2006 remodeling the Dukes golf course, which sits atop a hill overlooking St. Andrews, Scotland, and the home of golf, the Old Course.

The Dukes emerged transformed. So did Liddy.

He rediscovered the "real game," links golf, the windblown seaside courses of Scotland and Ireland with their dunes and gorse and tawny heather, their firm, rumpled green - and often brown - fairways.

"These golf courses have been around for four or five centuries," said Liddy, a golf course architect who lives in Yorktown, Ind. "We should be looking at how they're maintained and learn how to maintain our golf courses."

American golf courses, Liddy said, are judged on a "scale of green." People watch the Masters. They are seduced by the Augusta National Golf Club, its lush green, its combed perfection.

That's golf, people think. That's what I want my golf course to look like.

Not Liddy, a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects who has worked with Pete Dye, mostly as project architect, for the past two decades.

Liddy calls Augusta "the most artificial golf course in the world." For all its fame, beauty and splendor, it represents the ultimate in excess. Excessive irrigation. Excessive fertilization. Excessive maintenance. Perfection comes at a cost, and all its imitators bear it.