@jrenaut 96467 wrote:
You’re right, I should take it easy on golfers. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t make it necessarily bad. But the courses do take up a ton of space, cut down all the useful plants and replace them with what’s no doubt non-native grass, and require TONS of upkeep. And they take otherwise pleasant space and make it inaccessible even to the golfers because at any moment there could be a small, hard object moving very quickly at your head.
The more people we can convince to take up other pastimes, the better off we all are.
I tried my hardest. But here I go…..
Unless the other pastime is what? Car racing? We can all agree that is for sure the worst? That’s probably a bad hobby. The Porsche owner who takes his car to VIR would point out that people take their helicopters and airplanes (still kicking around leaded fuel) for joy rides and the Porsche owner can point out that he is responsibly not doing this on public roadways, can cyclists who race / train say the same? Some can, some can’t, some get called pathletes.
What, preciously, should we do with that space? People are paying to use it right now. People (or local governments) are making money on that land (private courses). Free parks are great, but they cost money (public land/municipal courses). They lose money. Some municipal owned golf courses lose money, but not as much money as they would if they had to upkeep a public park. Are there better things for the environment? Sure. But someone has to pay to maintain them. No free lunches. If so few people use the golf course that it loses too much money and would be better off as a public park I’m in. Awesome, lets do it make it a park. But if it was that easy/straight forward, it already would have been done (could be in the planning? I have no idea which course is the thorn in your side). The reality is probably that the park would cost more and that there isn’t the public support to pay for it. Granted, I live in Fairfax, but there are public parks freaking everywhere. I have seven in my zip code. Two of which could actually fit golf courses on them and I am a 5 minute walk to the metro. Not exactly Clifton.
Humans have hobbies. Its a great thing. Disparaging a hobby that you don’t enjoy is really easy to do. At some point, we are all doing something that is making the collective “we” worse off. Cycling is no different. Running is cheaper, requires less facilities, requires less non-renewable resources and is a better workout. So the statement “The more people we can convince to take up other pastimes, the better off we all are.” is just as true.
On the environment / plant side there has been a large push in the last 10 years or so to try and rectify some of the idiocy that occurred between about 1950 and 2000 when as a country, we collectively gave the middle finger to the environment in everything we did. And all of us here wish that there were less insane cyclists to give us a bad name. Please don’t judge all of golf because of a bad / stupid / poorly planned course and please don’t imply that our world is better if we all do the same things. That would be really really dull. There is such a thing an environmentally responsible golf course. I promise you.
***** Disclaimer, if the area you live has little to no park space or common use land and an empty golf course and jam packed parks BY ALL MEANS lobby for an alternate use, but that is not even close to the case in many areas and the golf courses are at least providing a revenue source and a green space for people to enjoy their hobby. ******
.
