Water Smart Golf: Design Principles Focused on Protecting Our Most Valuable Natural Resource

This thesis focuses on design techniques that can be implemented by golf course owners, designers, and superintendents in order to achieve water conservation on golf courses. This study is focused on golf courses of the arid western states of the conterminal United States where rainfall is less than 20 inches per year. The reasons why this water scarcity is becoming a greater issue are related to the growing population and competition for water resources during times of drought. Golf courses are huge consumers of freshwater resources and can be designed or redesigned to be more water conservative. Expense is always a concern when it comes to constructing golf courses. With the information given in the following thesis, all will see that spending on these water conservative design techniques now will save freshwater, energy, labor, and costs now and in the future.