“Golf Digest's Green Star Award” plus 3 more

Golf Digest's Green Star Award
Golf Course Etiquette: Can it be saved?
Golf team keeps building on young foundation
Golf course burnt body identified

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 11:52 AM PDT

This might be the role model for every golf facility that thinks it can't afford to go green.

Madden's on Gull Lake in Brainerd, Minn., is Golf Digest's lone recipient of our Green Star environmental award for 2010. Our panel of judges, which includes representatives from many facets of the golf industry and leading environmental organizations, believes that only Madden's meets the standards set by our four initial recipients from 2009: Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Texas, Kiawah Island (S.C.) Resort, Pebble Beach Resorts and Sunriver (Ore.) Resort. Those standards are extremely high, as they should be. A Green Star is meant to signify environmental achievement in every phase of a golf resort's operation.

Madden's is a charming, intimate, third-generation mom-and-pop facility positioned mostly on a peninsula in Gull Lake, with a mile of shoreline. It has four golf courses within its 1,000 acres, offering something for every skill level. The Classic at Madden's ranks 40th on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Public Courses. Pine Beach East, the resort's oldest, is a regulation 18, and Pine Beach West is an 18-hole par 67. There's also a par-28 Social 9. Madden's has 287 guest rooms in an inn, lakeside lodges, villas and overnight cabins. It's configured like a small village, complete with a row of storefronts that includes a general store and boutique shops.

But it is not Pebble Beach, with a $67 million reverse-osmosis water-treatment facility, or Kiawah Island, with an extensive underground drainage-recapture system. Madden's is a far more austere operation but equally dedicated to preserving and enhancing the ecology of its locale.

Madden's is Karen Enberg, daily collecting all trash for recycling, depositing it in her little red wagon that she tows around the property using an ancient red Farmall, a recycled tractor. It's course superintendent Scott Hoffmann, directing workers to hand pick weeds to avoid spraying synthetic chemical herbicides. It's co-owner C. Brian Thuringer, who once pitched in and shoveled leftover food into a pigpen to avoid wasting the stuff. (An experience, he says with a smile, best done not in street shoes.)

Thuringer owns the resort with his wife, Deb, whose great-uncle started the business in the late 1920s. It was Thuringer's idea in 2008 to embrace a hospitality-industry trend and establish a company-wide stewardship program. He organized a Green Committee to review and recommend changes to minimize the resort's impact on the environment. To his surprise, the committee found many sustainable practices were already in place, previously implemented as cost-cutting measures.

The resort already had a linen and towel re-use program in all guest rooms. The outdoor bars and dining areas were already using glassware and china instead of disposable cups and dishes. ("I've always felt that glass equals class," Thuringer says.) Hoffmann was already composting leaves and grass clippings for use as mulch and soil for the fenced-off chef's herb garden.

Left to right: iron instead of nitrogen fertilizer keeps the lightly watered Classic course green; 105 tons of waste have been recycled since 2008; there are 600 acres of wild native areas at the resort.

"Most of what we were doing made sense as well as cents," Thuringer says. "We just expanded from there, concentrating on what we could do manually. We weren't prepared to invest in a lot of technical equipment."

The resort added recycling bags to each lodging room, switched to recyclable bottles of complimentary shampoo and mouthwash, and installed towels made of recycled paper in restrooms. At the snack bar, polystyrene-foam food containers were replaced by ones made from biodegradable cornstarch.

Old mattresses were donated to a local charity. Old doors were re-purposed as desktops and benches elsewhere at the resort. Used fryer oil collected from the resort's seven food-service locations was turned over to a renewable-energy firm for use in biodiesel fuel. Staff members were directed to turn off lights in unoccupied rooms. (Thuringer's mantra, "When not in use, cut the juice," resulted in a savings of $32,000 the first year.)

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Golf Course Etiquette: Can it be saved?

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 09:06 AM PDT

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

We do tons of tips, but only infrequently instruct on how to behave around the course. This reader would like to see those behavioral tips come more often.

I would like to see the major golf magazines do an article about golf course etiquette. I have played over 90 rounds the last 2 years (mostly as a walk on single) and am still amazed by the total lack of golfer respect exhibited on a golf course. It happens with everyone from drunk kids pulling their carts out in front of my drives, to middle-aged guys who should not even be on a golf course and stand so close behind me that I can hit them with my backswing, to retirees who just forget where there are for most of the round except when they hit or step on my golf ball! It is truly amazing. Not everybody has to be a scratch golfer, but many can keep the suggested pace of play up and learn to not be the in the way all the time of others around them. I just think the majority of people playing golf today need some instruction on how to handle themselves on the golf course. Helpful suggestons as to where to stand, how to get a pin, and be quiet when someone is putting. Just little things like that. Maybe even make up a review card for people to take to the golf course, just to keep the respect and enjoyment in the game. Golf magazines spend so much time on instruction of how to hit the 300 yard drive, that doesn't exist for 97% of the people playing the game and so little time on how to actually enjoy a round of golf, especially when playing with strangers. Good Luck!!!

Thomas Cary, Aurora, CO

Thomas, can't agree with you more. We do these articles from time to time, but obviously not often enough for you. It's not only how players act, but how they look as well. We've spent some time recently trying to determine exactly what the standards are these days--not ours, but the ones courses and clubs are enforcing. "Golf's 'Other' Rules" in the October issue is worth a read. It's not surprising, for example, that 74 per cent of public courses permit caps facing backwards, but the fact that 31 per cent of private clubs do is a revelation to me. Similarly, that almost 40 percent of private clubs allow blue jeans. But I think we could live with unorthodox looks in golf, if, as you suggest, the behavior were more considerate.

Bob Carney

Illustration by Chris Gash

Golf team keeps building on young foundation

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 04:29 AM PDT

by Matthew Fahr
Armada Times Reporter

Armada head varsity golf coach John King will continue the building process he began last season with a young, raw group of golfers. His girl's team will look to improve on a 1-1 start to the season with another set of up-and-comers and two solid captains.

Seniors Haley Waterstraat and Elizabeth Crawford will lead the Tigers this fall and helped them to a record start two weeks ago.

In a match versus Imlay City at Castle Creek Golf course, Armada posted their lowest score ever - 193. Their effort was not rewarded with their first win of the season as the Spartans posted a score of 179.

"Their number one shot was an amazing round for them, but I was proud of our girls to come out like that in the first match," said King.

Sophomore Samantha Tarakoff led the Tigers with a round of 41 followed by Waterstraat with a 43 and a 48 from Crawford. Sophomore newcomer Jill Reuter rounded out the four Tiger scores with a 61.

Reuter will add to a list of young players, some who made appearances last season and some who are taking to the course for the first time in 2010.

Last year's sophomores, Stephanie Eichkholt, Tia Godin, Sarah Sowinski and Katie Bubel were first time players for King. This year, freshmen Elly Karam, Jamie Penzien and Kelsey Motoligin will try to make their mark along with sophomore Lauren Geodtel.

"Jill will be a solid member of this year's team and for years to come," King said of the sophomore. "Some of them are beginners though and are going to take some time to mature and learn the game."

As the younger players learn their game, both mentally and physically, the Tigers will lean heavily on co-captains Waterstraat and Crawford.

"Haley is our leader out there spiritually," King said. "Liz is still learning, but she is a great leader and always getting better. The biggest key for any golfer, and they are not different, is consistency, and that will be the key to our season."

The Tigers evened their season record with a win over Women's Independent Thumb League foe Lutheran Northwest on Thursday. At the Hamptons Golf Course in Rochester Hills, Armada posted a score of 212 compared to 246 for Northwest.

"All of our girls are fast learners, but a consistent number four starter is what I am looking for right now, and it is up for grabs," said the coach.

With only three other teams in the league, King has had to put some tough competition on his schedule. The Tigers will face Romeo and Lutheran North in the coming weeks and wrap up their season with Mount Morris.

The season holds a stiff learning curve for King's team, but he is confident they are up for the challenge.

"They are all becoming believers," he said. "Now it is a matter of what they can put together out on the course."

Contact Matthew Fahr at (586) 716-8100, ext. 300 or at matt.fahr@voicenews.com.

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Golf course burnt body identified

Posted: 07 Sep 2010 06:52 AM PDT

7 September 2010 Last updated at 09:37 ET

A man whose body was set alight and dumped at a golf course has been identified by police as a 37-year-old man from Brighton.

The remains of Stefan Welch, from Oriental Place, were found by golfers at the Dyke Golf Club on Saturday.

Sussex Police identified Mr Welch after a forensic sample sent for analysis provided a match on the DNA database.

Officers said Mr Welch probably died from a blow to the head but have not yet established what caused the injury.

'Covered in blood'

It is believed Mr Welch had been killed elsewhere and his body transported to Devil's Dyke Road in a vehicle.

Police said they believed his body had been dumped and set on fire any time between Wednesday and Saturday.

Det Ch Insp Trevor Bowles, from Sussex Police major crime branch, said: "Stefan was subjected to a particularly violent attack and his killer has gone to great lengths to cover up the crime.

"However, the chances are that his attacker - or his clothes - would have been covered in blood and my view is that someone, somewhere has the information that will lead us to them."

Golf Zone

Tuesday, September 7, 2010