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mini golf versus regular golf

This or That: Mini Golf or 18-Hole Golf?

A new study shows that golfers live longer. But what are they doing to the planet in the meantime?



Is mini golf ecofriendly?

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Golf seems to be a popular stress reliever, both the 18-hole kind and those mini courses full of families putting their way through windmills and around replicas of the Eiffel Tower. Golf courses are often criticized for being hard on the environment—U.S. greens are doused with as much as 300,000 gallons of water per day, according to some reports, plus enough pesticides to wipe out fish and wildlife in nearby streams. Are mini golf courses any better? Would the planet be better off if the budding Tigers of the world put down their drivers and started putting into lighthouses and clowns’ mouths?

This: 18-hole Golf

Pros: In addition to being a fairly low-impact form of exercise, golf, it seems, helps you live longer. A Swedish study of 300,818 golfers found that they live, on average, five years longer than the average Swede. And the better you are at the game, the longer you live; the golfers with the lowest handicaps had the lowest mortality rates.

Cons: Golf gets bad marks for environmental impact. After all, it takes thousands of gallons of water and thousands of pounds of pesticides to keep those greens looking so lush. Some of the pesticides used on golf courses, which are often the same chemicals sold to homeowners in lawn-care products, have been linked to cancer. One of the more common pesticides, 2,4-D, has even been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer that attacks the immune system. Those pesticides affect wildlife, too, interfering with the hatching of bird eggs and building up in groundwater and fish. Additionally, poorly designed or sited golf courses replace valuable wetlands or desert ecosystems with an unnatural green carpet that doesn’t provide the same habitat for endangered species, such as salamanders, or native plant species.



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What a stupid comparison

Who writes this garbage? Absolutely no basis to compare golf and mini golf and its environmental impact. Golf can generate many positive benefits to economies, communities and the environment.

Audubon International, the conservation society, has advocated golf courses like Barton Creek as places that can provide needed wildlife sanctuaries, preserve natural areas within urban environments, support plants and wildlife native to the area, protect water resources, filter stormwater runoff through golf course wetlands and turfgrass, rehabilitate degraded landscapes, and promote environmentally sound management. There are currently hundreds of courses throughout the U.S. that have been certified by Audubon International as having proactive environmental policies, which include returning unused turf to the wild. The organization pointed out that, by removing eight acres of turf, Arizona's Quail Run Golf Course saved 16 million gallons of water and 800 gallons of fuel.

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