On a billboard along a highway near Asheville, NC, Tiger Woods stands larger than life, poised (and posed) at the point of follow through, holding his finish and staring down the fairway -- or in this case, across the Blue Ridge Mountains. The ad invites the drive bys to "See what inspired me" at High Carolina, the latest Cliffs community and Tiger's first American golf course design, for which he was reportedly paid a mind-numbing $20 million.
Longtime residents of the Asheville area like their mountains just the way they are, and many have reacted to encroaching planned developments like High Carolina by raising their voices at town meetings, with letters to local editors and animated postings on local blog sites. No matter how much land mega-developers like Jim Anthony of The Cliffs promise to put aside for preservation or how much they crank up their PR machines, people in Asheville, like folks in most areas threatened by over-development, worry about runoff issues, pollution of the streams and rivers and the overall threat to the fragile local ecosystem.
Ashevile editorial cartoonist David Cohen has heard the anxieties about the "covered over trout streams and the usage of chemicals" that threaten the local environment over the long term. David has "never played a round of golf in his life, but has fond memories of days spent at the Putt-Putt course." While driving by the Tiger billboard he was inspired to create his own miniature golf billboard (below).
David, who draws
regularly for the Asheville Citizen-Times and is a member of the Association of
American Editorial Cartoonists, can be
contacted at
