Golf’s First Pest

The Ice Age and all its glorious glacial movements crawled across North America 650 million years ago providing the ultimate environmentally-friendly control of golf’s first pest – the earthworm. The ice suppressed the worms to the point that it wiped them out. Good news for the future of golf.

Unfortunately for American greenkeepers who burst on the scene a few years later, worms had been reintroduced by European settlers. Everything about the long, slimy, porosity increasing, organic digesting annelids was good for the soil. Unless, of course, the soil was under your putting green.

Middens, the little brown calling cards we all lovingly refer to as worm casts, pock marked turn of the 20^th century greens much to the dismay of early golf enthusiasts. This dismay was often voiced to the greenkeeper in rather unparlimentary language.

No one felt the wrath of earthworms greater than good ole George Low, the pro/greenkeeper of the Dyker Meadow Golf Club in Brooklyn, New York. The Carnoutsie native had never seen anything like it back home in Scotland. “Mon, thur no worms, thur snakes!” They drove the diminutive Scotsman nuts.

Dyker Meadow enjoyed the reputation of having the finest greens in the golf course rich New York Metropolitan area during the birth of American golf. Situated on the shores of the Gravesand Bay close by the Atlantic Ocean, the fertile soil of the golf links made it quite cozy for an earthworm and his extended family to set up house.

In the fall of 1900, a reporter from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote a scathing article about Low’s precious greens. “There is not a putting green on the handsome Dyker Meadow course that is in good condition. The worms have cast little heaps of dirt that make the running of a ball a matter of speculation.” Damn those middens. Ole George went to work.

Every greenkeeper had a secret recipe for a worm drench and Low’s consisted of tobacco, mustard, soap and water. The concoction was applied in the evening and by morning the greens were covered with writhing worms. The half dead worms were carried off in pails; sun dried and used as garden manure. The casts were whipped off the green with bamboo poles. Just a little hard work and Dyker Meadow was back on top.

The greenkeeping skills of George Low caught the attention of Louis Keller, a man who just built a new golf course and was looking to take it to the next level. They came to an agreement and Low packed his bags of magic and moved to New Jersey. He would spend the next twenty years polishing a real diamond in the rough – the Baltusrol Golf Club – while waiting for the arrival of golf’s next foe – the Japanese Beetle.

"Worms are vermin...so are fleas. If worms are a benefit to golf courses, fleas are of benefit to dogs."   Walter Travis  1920        

An advertisement from 1910 for a commercial worm eradicant.