tb - I didn't go to school for golf course design/management, but I've been a golfer since a kid, played dozens of courses across PA, and worked at a golf course for seven years in high school and college, before getting a "real" job. :hammer:
I'll try to give a breakdown in non-golfer terms...
Riparian buffers on streams just isn't a priority to a golf course owner/designer. In most cases it's probably not even considered, but if it were, the impact of creating such a buffer would be considered first and foremost in regard to how it impacted the course...both from an aesthetic standpoint and a functional standpoint of how it would affect how the course is played. If creating a riparian buffer would simultaneously achieve the desired aesthetics and course playability then yeah, they'd do it. If not, they wouldn't sacrifice those golf traits for sake of the trouts.
Functionally, I think this is what you end up seeing a lot on most golf courses...
If the stream in question runs parallel to the direction of play of the hole, to one side of the hole or the other, you're much more likely to see a riparian buffer of some kind...either in the form of allowing the natural trees/woods to surround the stream or allowing the grass to grow up higher next to the stream. These buffers will keep some balls from getting into the stream, speeding up the pace of play for the average player, and if a ball is hit that far offline, it was already a bad shot, and you're not penalizing a good shot by having players have to deal with tall grass or trees down the intended direction of play down the fairway.
If the stream crosses the direction of play of the hole, it's generally a different deal. The course wants players to see the scenic stream flowing across the fairway from the tee box. The reasoning for this is two fold. One, most courses like to showcase their water hazards, and often a course's signature hole or holes are built around their water hazards. (These are the pictures you see as the background on the course's scorecard or as the homepage on their website.) Having a riparian buffer would take away from the aesthetics of being able to see the stream as you play the hole. Secondly, when a stream crosses the intended direction of play of a hole, the stream is generally the main hazard players have to deal with when playing the hole. Meaning, the course wants the player to be able to see what the hazard is, and adopt strategy to hit the proper shot to avoid it. If the player is successful in doing so, and hits a good shot, the course doesn't want to penalize the player by having grass, trees, or other obstacles in the line of play of the hole that would interfere with an otherwise good shot that avoided the water hazard. In a lot less words perhaps...It's kind of sneaky to "hide" a stream that crosses the fairway behind some tall grass, and kind of sinister to put trees in the middle of the fairway.
The above applies up to and including higher end courses. The very, very top end courses that are capable of holding professional level tournaments and events are a little different in terms of how they're managed. These courses often do intend to punish "good" shots in specific instances in order to add more strategy into the fold for good golfers, and as a byproduct you sometimes see more riparian buffers "hiding" water hazards.
I'm a golfer and a FFer in favor of trout stream conservation. Unfortunately, those two things are often at odds with one another. I think the bigger issue golf courses create, more so than lack of riparian buffers, is the damming of streams to make ponds on the course...Both to design the course around (aesthetics and playability again), and to draw water from for irrigation. I think if streams were allowed to flow free there would be much less of an impact to the downstream watershed, even if stretches through the golf course weren't protected with riparian buffers. A lot of courses impound tiny first order tributaries to form their ponds, sometimes impounding the same tributary in a series of ponds, effectively ruining that stream (and perhaps the stream it runs into) in many cases for miles downstream. In a Summer like this in some parts of PA, they'll run their ponds (and the tributary that formed them) dry irrigating the course.
Sorry for the long response, but hope it helps explain the golf course theory behind their stream management...Golf and Trout are two things I'm passionate about!
