Goats Are The Future!

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Julie Williams follows up with a story on the goats thinning native grass areas at Pasatiempo and shares this from Terry Hutchens.

Terry Hutchens, extension goat specialist at the University of Kentucky, notes that employing goats for brush clearing is a West Coast idea making its way east. But then, so are goats.

“It’s been used in the West for years, but east of the Mississippi River, it’s a phenomenon,” said Hutchens, who predicts that using goats for brush management (on golf courses or otherwise) will be common practice in 10 years.

For the past two years, Hutchens has been involved in a student research project that introduced goats to three landfills located on Bluegrass Station, a former Army base in Fayette County, Ky., now operated by the state. Groups of four goats first were released in quadrants slightly smaller than a half-acre to assess their land-clearing capabilities. The project was taken one step further when goats ended up at Avon Golf Course, a public nine-hole facility on Bluegrass Station, on a two-month trial basis.

The Caddy's Compendium...

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Thanks to reader Bill for this "Caddy's Compendium" by Margaret Erskine Cahill and posted on the Schott's Vocab blog at NYTimes.com. They were mostly new to me!

The jungle means the rough. While a day in the clouds is used to describe working on a hilly course. The Scotchman is the appellation bestowed upon professionals, regardless of country. Big house is the club house. Matinee loopers are so stigmatized because of their habit of reporting for duty late or in the afternoon.

Ice cream caddies are schoolboys who earn spending money through caddying, but who do not depend upon it for a living. A looping fool is a caddy who holds the record for doing the most caddying per day, per week or per season at any particular course.

Golfweek Debuts Top 40 Best New Courses List

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Who knew there were enough courses for a list? Actually, forty may be the entire list of new courses which looks hefty considering next year's will be a much shorter list.

What struck me more than a couple of startling slights was the sheer comedic value of some of the course names. And I'm not referring to the ones named after their developers. In the interest of kindness, I won't name names.

"These guys can thrill thousands with their shot-making -- and don't need to squirt vintage champagne over nightclub revellers to make themselves appear 'interesting'."

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A very nice column by Karl MacGinty makes a simple case that the need for more colorful characters is ultimately not a product of their off-course life, as in Anthony Kim's case, but what happens on the course and how the emotions, strategy and beauty of the game will bring out the color.
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