I was watching some George Carlin clips on YouTube today when I came across one in which Carlin proposes an unusual idea: why don’t we claim — via eminent domain — all of the land used for golf courses in America and give it to the homeless?
In his act, Carlin says that American golf courses use up a total area larger than two Rhode Islands plus Delaware. That seemed too absurd to not investigate.
According to the Golf Course Superintendents of America, there are 2,244,512 acres of golf courses in the U.S. That’s the equivalent of 3,507 square miles.
And via the Wolfram Alpha search engine, I can tell you that two Rhode Islands (1,040 square miles each) and a Delaware (1,950 square miles) would add up to 4,030 square miles.
So Carlin was a bit off. But not by much.
That being said, I don’t think we need to reclaim the land used for golf; we just need to get back the time wasted while playing it. That’s the key to making America a more productive nation.
Fuck you
I, for one, would like to bulldoze all golf courses and put affordable homes in their place. I appreciate that this is a public forum.
RIP GC he was right on the money.
Some holes are more than 400 yds. And there are 18 of them. That’s 4 football fields for one hole. Golfing is pretty much for rich snobs place as meeting place to get wrecked and coked up. If you think about it, in most sports the ball comes to you. In golf, you hit the ball and then go chase after it over and over again. Elitist sport.
How much golf space in the world and what country would that be equivalent to?
Interesting fact: If you would cover all those golf courses with solar panels (PV) they would produce some 1,600-2,000 TWh per year. The US consumed 4,067 TWh of electricity in 2022 (of which 84% was produced with fossil fuels). Thus using US golf courses for PVs instead would generate almost half of the US’s electricity demand!