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Foul Golf
Mon Aug 11, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Lushly irrigated greens, towering trees to block the wind. Suburban golf is a comfortable
experience. But some golfers prefer a raw confrontation with this genteel game. Curt Nickisch
tees off from South Dakota.
At Sutton Bay Golf Course, the barren land is contoured much like a piece of paper that's been
crumpled and stretched out again. There are no trees, and a strong wind whisks the dull brown
prairie grasses surrounding the fairways. Mark Amundson oversaw construction of the course
earlier this year.
AMUNDSON: In a typical golf course they move somewhere between 250,000 and a million yards of
earth. We probably didn't move thirty thousand yards of earth - we just shaved off the native
grass and just sculpted the natural landforms a little bit, and otherwise didn't touch
anything.
The minimalist design is consistent with a trend that's giving weather renewed prominence in
the sport, says Brad Klein, the architecture editor at Golfweek magazine.
KLEIN: In golf, weather is always a factor.
Klein says a growing number of purists want to play the game as it's done on the traditional
windswept, seaside courses in Scotland and Ireland. For these golfers, the rain and wind are
central to the challenge.
KLEIN: When you think about all of the variables on a golf shot: you've got distance,
humidity, you've got the wind, you've got altitude, the more of those you can handle, the
better golfer you are.
Soon these new gusty courses may be as famous as Augusta National. Earlier this year Golfweek
magazine rated a blustery, weather-beaten course in Nebraska the top modern course in the
nation.
At Sutton Bay Golf Club in South Dakota, I'm Curt Nickisch.
The Weather Notebook is generously funded by Subaru of America, and The National Science
Foundation.
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