One of my favorite pastimes is reading my chapters' newsletters. This month, I was in for a treat when I picked up the Peaks & Prairies “Perfect Lie” and read a wonderfully penned post by Superintendent Mike Kitchen, CGCS’s daughter, Sydney.  After reading, I knew that I needed to share this with a larger audience, so I got Mike’s permission to share this on my blog. Please enjoy Sydney’s words as she defends our industry and shares her memories growing up as a superintendent’s daughter.

“What pesticides are you polluting the environment with”?

By Sydney Kitchen

Daughter of Mike Kitchen, CGCS of Teton Pines Resort and Country Club, Jackson, Wyo.

“What pesticides are you polluting the environment with?” was the question on the other end of the phone. My dad, always the ambassador, gently replied, “What pesticides do you think I’m using?” He invited the middle school student, and her entire class, to come visit the golf course so he could show them what he does as a superintendent. He explained about the precautions he takes to ensure the streams flowing through the golf course are not contaminated. He told them how the right cultural practices minimize the need for fungicides and insecticides. He took them out on the course so they could see the nesting boxes that are part of the course’s Audubon Certification. With his calm, gentle demeanor, he didn’t just explain to them how hard the golf course industry works to minimize negative impacts on the environment; he showed them that golf courses can be, and usually are, environmental stewards.

My brother and I grew up on the golf course. Some of our first steps were on the greens, toddling around in our bare feet. We spent countless hours riding in carts with my dad, talking about flowers, the squirrels, and the birds. We loved to explore the bushes and the native grass areas, sometimes looking for lost golf balls and sometimes just enjoying being outside. Every spring we got to watch baby ducks on the ponds, fox kits wrestling on the fairways, and river otters playing in the stream. We knew all of the irrigation boxes on the course is where salamanders and frogs could be found in the summer, as well as the best places to view trout and bald eagles.  In the fall, my dad would tell stories of bull moose sparring on the greens with each other, or sometimes, with an unfortunate flag stick that was accidentally left out overnight. So, when I hear people saying golf courses are bad for the environment, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at their lack of understanding.

My dad sees each encounter with misinformed people as an opportunity to change how they look at golf courses’ impact on the environment, and he does it with the even-tempered diplomacy of a true ambassador. I lack the knowledge about the golf course maintenance to be able to change people’s minds by explaining the horticulture, hydrology, and chemistry behind environmentally friendly practices, but I do have great memories that I can share. I can tell people about the grove of aspens that is home to a moose and her baby every spring, and I can tell them about the osprey that nest near the fourteenth fairway and catch fish out of the nearby stream. I can tell them about the different amphibians – ecosystems’ keystone and indicator species – that my brother and I would always find at the golf course.  Maybe that’s just as effective as explaining the philosophy and implementation of environmentally friendly golf practice and design. Or maybe it’s even better.