A few days ago, I came across a Fairways Magazine post featuring an astonishing project.
In Nashville, United States, a complex spanning more than 16,000 m² is set to accommodate an indoor 18-hole golf course. It will not simply be a succession of simulators. The long shots will be played toward a screen before players move on to real greens for approach shots and putting.
The promise is appealing: a full round in two and a half hours, without rain, excessive heat, and all year round.
The technological feat is undeniable.
But is it really progress?
I come from a world that already knows this promise
Before discovering golf, I spent a large part of my professional life in the world of skiing.
Indoor skiing is nothing new. It is now possible to ski under a roof, produce snow in midsummer, and recreate a slope in the middle of a city or desert.
Ski Dubai is undoubtedly the most spectacular expression of it.
To me, that is also an aberration.
Not because the technology involved lacks intelligence. It is remarkable. But because it uses that intelligence to deny everything that gives skiing its depth: the mountain, the cold, the altitude, the season, and even the impossibility of skiing when conditions do not allow it.
I have been fortunate enough to experience very different mountains: Sapporo in Japan, Breckenridge in the United States, Valle Nevado in Chile, and the Sierra Nevada in Spain.
I could talk about their ski areas, ski lifts, or the quality of their slopes. Yet that is not what I remember first.
I remember a particular air, a particular light, a particular cold. Snow that did not have the same texture elsewhere. A mountain that imposed its own conditions and resembled no other.
What I remember most is the feeling of being somewhere.
Skiing under a roof can reproduce a slope and a movement.
It does not reproduce skiing.
Is a golf course merely a succession of holes?
Since I became interested in golf, I have found something very similar.
When I read Fairways Explorer’s accounts of discovering different courses, what transports me is not only their architecture.
That is the place.
The vegetation, the light, the terrain, the weather, and sometimes the history. It is a course discovered early in the morning that will already be somewhat different a few hours later.
The wind picks up. The grass remains damp. A cloud changes the light. The terrain responds differently.
The course is alive.
We can reproduce the shape of a hole, calculate a trajectory precisely, and simulate the wind. But we do not truly reproduce a place. We create a compliant representation of it, stripped of anything that might disrupt our plans.
And that is precisely where something bothers me.
Everything, right away, all the time
The promise of these new environments is always one of availability.
Play whenever we want. Ski whenever we decide. Eat any fruit in any season. No longer depend on rain, cold, heat, or the calendar.
We have gradually grown accustomed to viewing every limitation as a problem to be solved. If something is not immediately available, we should produce it, import it, simulate it, or put it under a roof.
But is wanting access to everything, all the time, really progress?
Or does it sometimes resemble the whim of a child who cannot bear the world telling them no?
I come from a deeply seasonal world. In ski resorts, we waited for the snow. We watched the sky and looked out for the first snowfall.
Then came that particular morning when the mountain was finally white.
The season began.
We also knew it would end.
This constraint could be frustrating. But it gave those moments their intensity. The first snow mattered precisely because it had been awaited. The last day of the season mattered because it would not return the following week.
What is permanently available eventually ceases to be anticipated. And what is no longer anticipated may also cease to be desired in the same way.
Nature also needs time for itself
We sometimes tend to regard nature as a backdrop that is always available. A space that should be green, snowy, in bloom, or welcoming at the exact moment we have decided to enjoy it.
But nature is not a service provider.
It has its rhythms, silences, and periods of rest. Winter slows some forms of life down. The soil regenerates. Plants wait. Landscapes change before being reborn in another form.
This time is neither empty nor useless.
We sometimes struggle to admit that producing nothing, offering nothing, and not being immediately available can have value. Yet we know that taking time for yourself is not selfish.
Sometimes, it is even a responsibility. We need to step back, slow down, and catch our breath so that we can fully return to others.
Why would we deny nature what we are trying to learn to grant ourselves?
It, too, needs periods during which it seems to give us nothing more. The soil regenerates. Some plants enter dormancy. Landscapes shed their leaves before being reborn in another form.
Nature does not rest to escape the world.
It rests so that it can renew it.
Perhaps we have something to learn from it.
Accepting that the world tells us no
Nature owes us neither snow in December, nor blue skies on Saturday morning, nor an absence of wind at the start of the first hole.
Sometimes, it is annoying.
That is also what makes it real.
Golf and skiing normally teach us to work with what is there. To adapt a movement, a route, or an expectation. To recognize that we do not control everything.
Rain forces us to change our plans. Wind transforms the course. A lack of snow asks us to wait or give up.
They are not necessarily anomalies to be corrected.
Sometimes, they are reminders.
The world exists independently of us. It does not organize itself entirely around our schedules, desires, or comfort.
By systematically removing this confrontation, we do more than make the experience more comfortable.
We change its nature.
Is everything that is possible desirable?
I do not believe that all technology should be rejected.
Simulators make it possible to train, discover golf, and continue playing when outdoor conditions make it impossible. They can open the sport to people who otherwise would not have access to it.
But a supplementary tool must not become our new model of the world.
The question is not whether we are capable of building a ski slope in the desert or a golf course completely cut off from the seasons.
We know that we are.
The question is why we are so determined to do it.
By treating every limitation as an intolerable frustration, we risk losing our appreciation for waiting, scarcity, and the unexpected. Above all, we risk confusing getting exactly what we want with having a valuable experience.
Golf, like skiing, is not merely a sporting gesture.
It is a way of being outdoors, of walking, looking, feeling, and adapting. It means accepting the wind when we would have preferred there to be none. Sometimes it means giving up, turning back, or waiting.
Making everything available is not necessarily progress.
Sometimes, limits are part of the experience.
Sometimes, nature needs us to give it time.
And sometimes, hearing the world tell us “not today” does us a world of good.