I hope everyone’s summer is going great. Mine has been eventful so far. I got a late start on this fellowship, but I finally took off on June 14th. My first stop was a golf course called Farmlinks Golf Club. The course is located 50 minutes southeast of Birmingham, Alabama. This site was not on my original itinerary, but I wanted to visit this course because it’s the first and only research demonstration golf course. This course is visited by over a 1,000 superintendents, researchers, and students a year. I met with the director of agronomics Mark Langner to find out about what the course was about. After meeting with Mark I realized golf courses can almost enhance an ecosystem if you think about it. They release a lot of oxygen, act as a filter and can help recharge groundwater. At Farmlinks they do a lot of testing on different varieties of turf grasses and a lot of studies on fertilizers, among many other things. One of the first things he told me is that golf courses don’t hurt the existing ecosystem it enhances the existing ecosystem. Another topic he brought up that was really interesting is some of the studies done on fertlizer use on a golf course vs. home owner use. The course was built around small foothills in rural Alabama. What I really enjoyed about this course is the experiences through many different landscapes such as wildflower meadows, native prarie meadows, wetlands and coniferous and deciduous forest. The signature hole on the courses is a 180 yard par 3 with a huge elevation drop (coolest hole I have ever seen). Just look at some of the pictures:)
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