Guide helps superintendents manage golf facilities in an efficient manner while providing quality playing surfaces and protecting the environment

The Cactus & Pine Golf Course Superintendents Association with assistance from collaborative golf organizations in Arizona recently published the “Arizona Best Management Practices Guide”. 

Best Management Practices (BMPs) programs help superintendents manage golf facilities in an efficient manner while providing quality playing surfaces and protecting the environment. They also enable the golf course facility to operate where regulatory pressures exist, and they offer the industry a significant platform for advocacy, education, recognition, and demonstration of professional land management.

Developed using the Best Management Practices Planning Guide and Template created by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) and funded by the USGA, the Arizona guide is part of a larger project spearheaded by GCSAA that will implement BMPs in all 50 states by 2020. 

Funded through a $10,000 grant from GCSAA’s philanthropic arm, the Environmental Institute for Golf (EIFG) and the PGA TOUR, the Cactus & Pine GCSA assembled a team of 23 industry professional throughout the state to contribute to the guide.  Numerous golf course superintendents, Cactus & Pine GCSA chapter executive Carmella Ruggiero and representatives from the University of Arizona, United States Golf Association, American Society of Golf Course Architects, the Arizona Department of Agriculture, Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Maricopa County Environmental Services Department made up the working committee. 

The guide is a digital document (printable in a PDF or Word format) that golf course superintendents can access free of charge through the GCSAA website and edit to further fit the needs of their specific facility.  With the diverse climate in Arizona, this allows courses from North to South and East to West to customize their guides to the ever-changing turf management practices as well as state, tribal, and federal laws and regulations.

“It’s a living, breathing document and as things change, it can be updated. That’s the beauty of it,” said Doug Dykstra, Cactus & Pine President and certified golf course superintendent at White Mountain Country Club in Pinetop, who served as chairman of the project.

The guide focuses on 12 sections:  Plan, design and construct; irrigation; surface water management; water quality management; nutrient management; cultural practices; integrated pest management; pesticide management; pollinator protection; maintenance operations; landscape; and energy.

Each of the sections in the 154-page guide contains numerous subcategories as well as information and links to state regulatory requirements.

An emphasis was placed on the irrigation, surface water management and water quality management.  While the Arizona golf industry only uses 1.9 percent of the state’s freshwater withdrawals, courses are a constant target of environmental groups, the media and the non-golfing public. 

“Water is the most critical issue facing courses in Arizona and the Southwestern United States,” said Rory Van Poucke, a member of the Arizona BMP committee and general manager and Class A superintendent at Apache Sun Golf Club in San Tan Valley.  “There are numerous factions throughout the state that don’t see the industry as a beneficial user or water.  We need to change that perception and the BMPs are a sound tool to educate some of our opposition on golf’s sustainability efforts.”  

In addition to a tool for superintendents to help manage the states over 300 golf facilities and estimated 55,000 acres of land, the guide is available to the states allied golf organizations to further promote the industries environmental effort to policymakers, media and the public.

To view the guide in its entirety or download the PDF, visit the Cactus & Pine website.