Thanks to Phil for sending this my way. Planet golf has a really interesting story on the revival of Royal Melbourne as a championship golf course. Most Americans probably don’t know it, but Melbourne has been in drought conditions for most of the last 10 years.
So how exactly do you get a golf course in shape to host a major tournament without a reliable source of water? Well, you build a $4.5M stormwater harvesting system. Then you convert your fairways to a more robust strain of grass and you hope that you at least get enough rain to make sure you didn’t just waste millions of dollars.
Another interesting fact: The greens are a bent grass variety known as Sutton’s Mix which has been in use at Royal Melbourne since the 20′s and is not found on any other course in the world. Who knew?
