Here at Bob O'Link I'm seeing coyotes we never had, hawks, herons, bluebirds in nests, and deer. The evidence may be anecdotal, but it is also convincing when measured against the backdrop of how much the industry has changed in the last generation. Even today on many British and Irish linksland courses, it is commonplace to find a putrid but effective homemade brew of fertilizer. All that's missing is tongue of newt. Such a potent mix has been part of the game for decades.
Chemical companies spend millions of dollars trying to devise something as effective.
There were three distinct but related developments that brought heavy chemical applications into the picture. The first was golf's move inland, to courses with clay and loam soils that were unable to provide as supportive a growing culture as was sand for seaside bentgrasses and fescues. The second shift was the advent, starting in the 1920s, of irrigation systems. Until the late 1960s, such systems were a series of quick couplers that had to be operated by hand. In the 1970s, fully automated irrigation grids became standard.