Old Course Could Be Sea World by 2050

Well, this is certainly bad news for golf history buffs, environmentalists, Tiger Woods ... just about everybody but Scott Hoch and Kenny Perry, really: climate changes could mean the Old Course at St. Andrews will be underwater by 2050.

That's right, no matter how much some people want to poo-poo the idea, Al Gore's worst fears have been realized. On the upside, the course will play much longer with all the water hazards, and pretty much render all the technological advances moot. So there's that.

Looking at the larger picture, though, golf would be losing its most historically significant course.

Cue egghead in lab coat:

Professor Jan Bebbington, director of the St Andrews Sustainability Institute, has visualised the effect of climate change on Scotland in 50 years.
She was one of several commissioned by the David Hume Institute to predict what would happen in the future. ...
"Like many of your own countries we have had to adapt to more severe winter storms, to more flooding, coastal erosion and also rising sea levels.
"[This climate-change study] still a painful experience, especially as we lost many historical sites on coasts (for example, many of you will remember the sorrow at the last British Open played in St Andrews)."

There is a silver lining, however: Bebbington predicts we'll all be mostly car-pooling vegetarians who have respected and trusted political leaders.