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Preface to
Golf In The
Year 2100
A
little over one hundred years ago, horse and buggy was the most
rapid mode of personal travel; the telegraph |
 |
Excerpt from
Golf In The
Year 2100
We
were greeted at Bandon by Course Master Emil Kant who was waiting
in a golf cart hover craftcraft. |
 was the fastest method of communication;
the average life expectancy around 48; and doctors still believed
in leeches as a medical practice to purify the blood. The idea
of machines flying like birds was the crazy dream of Wilbur and
Orville Wright; the best source of information was the encyclopedia
at the local library; and many people farmed the land in order
to survive.
Golf
was played on 5,000-yard courses with clubs made of wood, balls
made of tree sap and tees made of sand. A long drive traveled
200 yards, greens rolled at less than half the speed of today
and the next tee was usually two club lengths from the previous
hole. It was in this environment that J. McCullough wrote his
1892-book Golf in the Year 2000, and predicted television, bullet
trains, digital watches and red golfing jackets that yelled ‘Fore’
whenever the ball was hit.
With
the advances made in the century since McCullough’s volume,
and the rapid rate of progress and change we take for granted
today, who’s to say that the brave new world Martin Grant
finds himself in at the start of Golf in the Year 2100 is inaccurate?
Like his predecessor in McCullough’s book, Grant feels like
an alien in his homeland—a place where thoughts are projected,
inanimate objects are interactive and people live 125 years.
Grant finds golf to be a comfort, at least until scorecards start
talking, the course environment can be altered at whim, combatants
try to disable one another on the fairway and everything from
balls, bags and hazards are suspended in space.
If
you’d like to join him, open your mind, put aside your reliance
on today’s conventions and hop on board. The next hovercraft
leaves in a moment. |
Stillwater
had called ahead to ask for a tour of the course construction.
“As you can see, we’re employing the latest magnetic
resonance construction techniques,” offered Kant as we flew
across the ocean-side landscape. “Using a hand-held envisioning
device, the architect has charted each green, hazard, mound and
depression down to a sixteenth of an inch. When she has every
contour on the hole exactly the way she wants it a magnetic charge
will permeate the ground, infiltrating every rock, plant and
soil type designated for removal. A giant magnet will then delete
the superfluous material, leaving the exact contours of every
feature, just as the architect has planned it. We then spray
the rubberized skin atop that, and when that sets, we’re
ready to install the sub-surface engineering.”
I
marveled at how this alien technique would be just as shocking
to the 20th century course builders and their massive earth moving
equipment as it would have been to Donald Ross with his drag
pans and work horses. But I had to keep my comments to myself
as we moved to a hole where the next step was underway.
“The
massive sponges you see attract water molecules through ionization
charges, so any natural rainfall or excess irrigation is brought
through the soil profile to the collection basins,” noted
Kant. “It is released from the catch areas when they reach
a specific saturation, cleansed, and then fed back into the irrigation
system. This recycling is, of course, mandated by federal law,
and any overflow is stored in underground chambers for future
use.” As an aside, Stillwater informed me that air-borne
irrigation was also outlawed decades ago. |
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