At the Golf Industry Show in February, the American Society of Golf Course Architects had just emerged from a closed-door meeting. Two scions of the profession, Alice and Pete Dye, approached Golf Digest Architecture Editor Ron Whitten in the Orange County Convention Center hallway. When Pete and Alice come calling, you listen.

With Bruce Charlton ascending to the ASGCA presidency, they explained to Whitten that there would be an increased emphasis on environmental issues. The Dyes told Whitten that one of the ways to immediately impact the game would be through some sort of environmental category in the highly influential Golf Digest course rankings.

Whitten explained that the panelists had enough on their plates already, so Pete started in on his beef about what he called the "excessive use" of water on American courses. Whitten countered that maybe it was time to redefine the magazine's conditioning category.

The old Golf Digest ballot definition for "Conditioning" went like this: "How would you rate the playing quality of tees, fairways and greens when you last played the course?"

This disastrous 18-word definition left the magazine open to extreme hostility from golf course superintendents and architects who found it emphasizing the manicuring and beautification of turf over leaner conditions that would produce firm and fast golf.

Alice and Pete Dye suggested an environmental category to Golf Digest's Ron Whitten.

Under those fluorescent lights of the convention center halls, a debate ensued over the proper rewording for the conditioning category should Whitten get it approved by his superiors. The Dyes nominated sentences that emphasized "firm and rolling," but were leery about giving the impression that golf should have greens that don't hold. Whitten came back with something about "firm and fast" but also threw in a stipulation about greens still holding.

They eventually settled on the language: "How fast, firm and rolling were the fairways, and how firm yet receptive were the greens on the date you played the course?"

Whitten e-mailed Jerry Tarde, head honcho of Golf Digest, who circulated the proposed redefinition among the editors. They came back with questions, as editors are prone to do, most wondering about a panelist playing two days after a heavy rain. Whitten noted that Golf Digest panelists were smart enough to understand such circumstances, and then volleyed back with comments about courses that don't drain well, which would give superintendents ammunition to install better drainage.

But mostly Whitten saw this as an opportunity to reward a cut back on water usage. The editors agreed, especially since they could incorporate this in the May issue where they were preparing to run a 30-page report on golf's place in the environment by writer John Barton.

This unprecedented package would be the ideal place for Golf Digest to influence what the publication sees as a crisis for the game — what the magazine calls golf's excessive water use and the need to irrigate a lot less. Considering that Golf Digest was putting the finishing touches on its May issue, this radical change in its conditioning definition just barely slipped into the coverage. While kinks must be worked out, the unprecedented change speaks to the urgency of the issues at hand.

As much as it pains most of us to give any golf magazine the impression we respect their rankings (lest it go to their head), Golf Digest is the most-powerful media outlet in the sport with 1.5 million subscribers. No matter what you think of rankings or how much you might quibble over the definition of categories used by panelists, we're about to find out just how influential Golf Digest really is. This will also put more pressure on the Golf Digest panel to start looking closely at maintenance practices and drainage. But the times are a-changing — sort of. I had the privilege of speaking to the Golf Digest Panelist Summit last fall, where the group convened at Pinehurst to talk shop.