Naturalized areas have been an integral part of golf courses since the game was first played on the Scottish linksland. Rough areas consisting of native grasses and gorse provided soil stabilization and a low-cost natural hazard. It is easy to understand how these areas influenced early golf course design in North America. Donald Ross noted the virtues of natural areas in his book Golf Has Never Failed Me: “In British courses,heather, whims, and bentgrass are in many cases left growing in a diagonal formation, producing a remarkably interesting hazard.”