DAVID TAGGART
AGRONOMY UPDATE Dear Members,
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Check out the below link showing exactly how to repair a pitchmark: https://youtu.be/GuYXMn4tA10
RAIN INTERRUPTIONS ollowing the recent downpours, the golf course has held up extremely well with most turf areas now clear of casual water, however many of the desert areas still remain water logged with standing surface water. Subject to further rain events this week, we expect these areas to be clear by the weekend in time for the Men’s Open. The great news is that the fresh rain water is great for general turf health and supports the process of flushing salt through the profile of the soil.
COOLER TEMPERATURES As many of you know this year we have made the decision not to overseed the golf course. So far this has been a successful decision and we have been pleased to see so many members on the course through a time when we would otherwise be restricted due to growing the new winter Ryegrass in the months of November and December. Whilst removing overseed has paid dividends in November and December we now enter a crucial period over the next few months.
As temperatures continue to drop and we experience cloudy days, the ‘summer’ Bermuda grass will begin to struggle until we experience consistently warmer temperatures (back end of March). Golfers can play a vital role in how well the golf course deals with this colder weather. Please make every effort to follow the below steps and encourage your playing partner to do the same:• Observe directional signage, rope and weekday cart path only protections. These are in place to distribute wear more evenly and to protect key areas of the golf course. • Drive on the fairways and avoid the rough. The rough will be the first areas to suffer in cold temperatures and will need to be protected. • Fill all your divots. The grass is growing slower now than at any point of the year. Any divots taken at this busy time will take at least double the time to recover than they would in the summer months. • Repair your pitch mark and someone else’s. In the same way as the divots, any unrepaired pitchmarks will take longer to recover now than they would at any other point of the year. In reference to the last bullet point, it’s essential that pitchmarks are repaired the right way – and yes, there are many incorrect ways to repair a pitchmark, which can do more harm than good!
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All in all we’re pleased with the playability and presentation of the golf course, during what is our first winter in over 20 years that we haven’t overseeded the golf course with a winter Rye grass.
GREENSIDE BUNKER COMPACTION Over the last couple of months we’ve received a lot of feedback from members about the greenside bunkers being hard and compact. The root cause of this is irrigation water overthrow that compacts the sand, which we won’t be able to fully cure until we replace what is a 30 year old irrigation system (planned for 2023/24). In the meantime, David is working on a solution to adapt our ‘Sandpro’ (machine which rotovates the sand in bunkers), which will help alleviate this issue and make the process less labour intensive. I’ll update you once some initial trials have been done and hopefully we see a positive shift in the playability.
BUNKER FACES You will have noticed that this season, David and his team have changed the way our bunker faces look, which now promote less plugged balls and allows the ball to roll down from the face to the flat areas of the bunker. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to get in and out of some bunkers, however in general there are always better areas than others (areas of the bunker that don’t have a deep face), where you can step in and out of the bunker much easier. Although this is common sense, we are still seeing many golfers on a daily basis, trudging up and down the deep faces of bunkers, which is not only ruining the way the bunkers look and play, but more concerning is they don’t rake up their mess behind them. Please can I request your support in keeping an eye out for golfers that do this and report them to a Marshal immediately, who can then help educate them. Thanks for reading. As always, I’d be delighted to hear back from you if you have any queries, concerns or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me personally.
NEW GOLF CART FLEET & GPS I’m delighted to announce that we will soon be receiving delivery of a brand new fleet of EZGO Golf Carts. The carts are fitted with lithium batteries, which take less power to charge and last longer out on the course, making them much more environmentally friendly. The carts will also be fitted with the latest in GPS technology – the same technology you may have seen at Jumeirah Golf Estates. Due to global shipping challenges the arrival of the carts has been delayed, however we fully expect to have all 80 new carts in operation by the end of Q1.
