This 12 months’s Sustainable Golf Week, which was held from November 10-17, was marked internationally, with 75 international locations, together with Australia, UAE, UK, Canada, United States, Vietnam and Portugal, internet hosting occasions, in addition to checking in en masse with the broader neighborhood at www.sustainable.golf, the net hub maintained by the GEO Sustainable Golf Basis.
“Truly, these are the tales, questions and knowledge the sustainable golf neighborhood shares 52 weeks a 12 months.” explains Jonathan Smith, founder and Government Director of the Basis. “However Sustainable Golf Week is a bit particular. It’s a second every year when many individuals take a step again, assess the work accomplished, and take a second to have fun it earlier than refocusing on subsequent steps. As a result of sustainability is rarely accomplished. A bit like the way in which golf just isn’t a recreation of excellent.”
Based mostly in North Berwick, the GEO Sustainable Golf Basis is a world not-for-profit organisation based in 2006 as a pioneer in what has change into the game and sustainability motion. GEO is devoted to serving to golf navigate sustainability, throughout the novice {and professional} recreation, by serving to to foster collaboration and encourage motion. Living proof: Sustainable Golf Week.
The opposite 51 weeks of the 12 months, the Basis offers sustainability methods, accessible industry-wide instruments and packages, and credible certification. The Basis additionally companions with nationwide and regional golf associations, skilled excursions and tournaments, even skilled gamers as people – all with a thoughts towards serving to them every deliver extra individuals into the fold, to attain extra for golf, extra shortly.
This 12 months, Sustainable Golf Week was sandwiched between two main environmental occasions on the worldwide calendar: the COP16 for Nature in Colombia, and the COP29 for Local weather in Azerbaijan. Each highlighted important planetary points which can be intently adopted to assist guarantee golf’s options are nicely aligned.
Here’s a snapshot of occasions that befell around the globe to mark Sustainable Golf Week 2024:
• In Dubai, The European Tour Group — directors of the DP World Tour, Problem Tour, Legends Tour and G4D Tour — launched a new awards program celebrating “suppliers which have pioneered sustainable improvements and practices of their work supporting its golf tournaments.”
• In Australia, LIV Adelaide introduced in November that the occasion had achieved GEO Licensed standing — the primary Australian event operation to take action. See right here a newly revealed white paper exploring the way forward for sustainable event occasions.
• Royal Queensland Golf Membership in Australia has introduced its personal newly acquired GEO Licensed standing within the golf facility class, an achievement proudly shared previous to the Australian PGA Championship contested there from November 21-24.
• In Western Canada, course superintendent Robin Sadler appeared again on Mickelson Nationwide Golf Membership’s first 12 months on the sustainable golf pathway. This facility, situated outdoors Calgary, Alberta, was the primary Canadian course operation to be acknowledged as GEO Licensed.
• Within the US, the PGA Tour is marching near its dedication to get all of its TPC programs GEO Licensed, as a part of the Tour’s complete sustainability technique. The TPC Colorado was first over the road in spring 2024, with many extra Tour properties scorching on its heels. The signature PGA Tour Championship, held yearly at East Lake GC in Atlanta, was GEO Licensed within the occasions class final 12 months.
• In Lisbon, at October’s Worldwide Golf Tourism Market Convention, IGTM introduced its new partnership with GEO — to advertise and allow sustainable golf tourism, a worthwhile however heavy raise.
Elsewhere, the organisational pattern towards sustainability training additionally continues apace, throughout the globe, with an increasing number of conferences highlighting sustainable golf points.
Simply final week, the Nationwide Golf Course House owners Affiliation Canada hosted 550 individuals in classes that included sustainability panels and a plenary breakfast handle from the Basis’s Jonathan Smith.
In Europe, the Swedish Greenkeepers Convention drew greater than 300 superintendents, house owners and membership managers to Gothenburg, the place GEO offered a keynote handle. In Portugal, a devoted workshop led by the European Golf Affiliation at its annual assembly skilled the highlight on sustainability to an viewers of 40 nationwide governing our bodies.
The topic of sustainable course growth and renovation additionally led the training programming at a current gathering of Southeast Asian course house owners at Hoiana Shores Golf Membership, simply south of Danang, Vietnam, the place GEO Developments Director Sam Thomas was a panelist. This occasion was organized by the Asian Membership Managers Affiliation and the Asian Golf Trade Basis.
Through the week, Jonathan Smith shared an impassioned name for golf to play a much bigger, louder function in its personal future and attempt to change into a good larger recreation, for a larger good.
He stated: In a world pushed by sustainability, which incorporates not solely environmental stewardship but in addition moral behaviour and social fairness, it’s vital that golf conveys its commitments and worth extra strongly out to the world. And that message isn’t just about what we’re already doing; it ought to goal additional, placing extra concentrate on recognising the extra alternatives and the way golf will work even more durable for communities and nature in a broader vary of how. It could present ambition and innovation to do the utmost, not the minimal. ”
