One Golf Course Too Many For Martha's Vineyard

In narrowly rejecting a proposed new 18-hole golf courselast week, the Martha's Vineyard Commission - in the words of the NewYork Times - "declared the game, particularly as played by summer-seasonswells who swoop in and out on private jets, to be a kind ofrecreational poison slowly killing the clam-digging, beachcombing,plaid-shirt-wearing soul of Martha's Vineyard." According to the Times,two of the four private golf courses on the island are open only tomembers and their guests, and the other two restrict public play. Thepopulation of the small island swells from 15,000 in the winter to morethan 115,000 in the summer - and many of those visitors come for thegolf. Part of the problem is a new kind of rich visitor: "People bringtheir suburban lives here, and they want it to be the same as they haveat home. They don't care as much for our traditional activities, such assailing, fishing, swimming and digging clams and scallops."

Thanks to Dateline APA