When Waterwood Watchdog retired at the Pennsylvania Department of
Education, she envisioned escaping six months of snow and spending
all year enjoying a golf course in the Piney Woods of East Texas.
That's why she bought a cottage at Waterwood, about an hour and a
half north of the Houston International Airport. Houses sell between
$20,000 and $250,000 and the par 75 course (designed by Pete Dye)
boasts such a high degree of difficulty, that it's considered among
the 50 most difficult courses in America.

But what Waterwood Watchdog liked best was the intimacy of a rural
hamlet in the middle of a vast forest teeming with wildlife and
native plants. The developer had promised (in legal documents) that
the native plants and the magnificent environmental heritage of
Waterwood would be protected.

Waterwood Watchdog's idyllic hamlet, however, began to turn sour when
the Board of Directors claimed they couldn't prevent hundreds of pine
trees from being logged and hauled away by the golf course owner for
his own financial gain. Soon after she joined two neighbors in a
political race to put fresh new faces on the Board of Directors, she
set in motion a series of events that bedeviled not only Waterwood
Watchdog but her neighbors and friends. Powerful Board directors,
Agee, Carey, Beare, and others, tried to exert even more power by
attempting to discredit Waterwood Watchdog and her cohorts. They
issued letters, filed a law suit, and made flat-out refusals to
requests for information.

Waterwood Watchdog started getting e-mails, letters and phone calls
asking if she could continue to needle directors into doing the right
things. Thus began Waterwood Watchdog's electronic newsletter and
research into legal documents and agreements. The community's
complaints are never-ending. Last month, Waterwood Watchdog received
complaints about our security staff's lack of respect for residents
and our directors' lack of enforcement of deed restrictions with
regards to removal of native plants. With our directors' nod of
approval, despite deed restrictions to the contrary, homebuilders are
permitted to remove all native plants from their lot, destroying the
very essence of what makes Waterwood different from other golfing
communities.

Although "activism" can be destructive to living in an idyllic
hamlet, discord in a golf community seems to be a phenomenon these
days. The lot owners and residents of Waterwood are not the only ones
who seem to spend more time grumbling than working on their golf
game. At the 28-year-old Grenelefe Golf Resort in Haines City, Fla.,
for example, more than 300 condominium owners have been staring at
three vacant championship courses, empty swimming pools, an unused
conference center and locked restaurants since the 1,000-acre resort
filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in February.

At Forest Dunes near Higgins Lake in Michigan, a handful of residents
who snapped up the first available houses in 1999 watched as the
lender foreclosed on the property even before the golf course
opened. And one of the ugliest disputes is on Fisher Island, near
Miami, where developers and homeowners have been fighting in court
for over five years.

Buying a lot located in a golfing community hasn't always been
fraught with peril. Ever since the Brookhaven Country Club in Dallas
successfully combined golf and real estate in 1957, vacation-home
hunters and retirees have flocked to similar developments. They go
for the love of the game as well as the real estate. Golf residences,
by definition, are almost always in scenic settings. And, often there
are plenty of amenities like pools and even riding stables.

But these days, homeowners are also finding that there can be a dark
side to golf utopias beginning with the game itself. Despite the
prediction that aging baby boomers would flood golf courses
throughout the country, the number of rounds played declined in 2000
and 2001 and continues to slide this year, down almost 3 percent
through July, according to Golf Datatech, a research company in
Kissimmee, Florida. And numbers from the National Golf Foundation
show that the slowdown comes just after a record boom in building.
The number of new golfing communities increased 38 percent from 1996
through 2000. Although these figures may mean shorter waits on
popular courses closer to Houston, they may also mean that some
courses, such as Waterwood, are having a harder time making ends meet.

And when golf courses have a hard time making ends meet, the
community is indirectly affected. What's happening at Beau Rivage
Golf Resort in Wilmington, N.C., could happen here at Waterwood.
Beau Rivage's developer died in 1997 and left the property to his
widow. The following year, she sold the golf course to a golf
management company. The big change came last year when she sold 2.27
acres across from the clubhouse to Carolina Green Estates, which is
planning to build 32 apartments for the low-income elderly. The
homeowners' association is now in the middle of a court fight, since
the homeowners are seeking to block the apartment proposal. It isn't
just the apartment building that has residents worried, there are
also plans for 200 condominiums to be built in three-story buildings
on either side of the entrance drive.


Mr. St. Pierre of the Heritage Harbor golf community in Lutz,
Florida, near Tampa, Florida never intended to become an activist
when he joined the five-member board; he and his neighbors are
getting a crash course in the business of golf to help save their
community. And whoever said that golf was a gentleman's game has not
been to Fisher Island. At this tiny golf condominium community in
Biscayne Bay just south of Miami Beach, at least a dozen lawsuits
have been filed over the last five years, including one in which the
property's developer was accused of trying to run over a homeowner
with a golf cart when he spotted him handing out political
leaflets. Like Waterwood Watchdog, activists who live in a golfing
community never meant to become activists. But when they discover
that their idyllic hamlet is losing its real estate value and
desirability, they get active.

Waterwood is no different from other golf "utopias" - it has
a few residents who are outspoken and opinionated about Board
directors and their decisions, or lack of decisions. While Agee and
some other directors and residents find this disgusting, others find
it healthy. Waterwood Watchdog would argue that the outspoken people
in the community represent the knowledgeable people who have taken
time to understand the issues, the documents and the threats to the
community. Although some old-timers on the Board like to portray
this small group as dissidents and trouble-makers, often it is these
people who are the thoughtful ones who have done their homework.
Fortunately last month's election of directors resulted in
four more new faces on the Board; old-timers are now a minority. If
there's ever been a right time for Board directors to cultivate
tolerance and a willingness to resolve disagreements, it is now.