CAPTAIN’S MESSAGE

STEVE DRAKE

JUMEIRAH GOLF ESTATES CAPTAIN

We are now into a new golfing year with the Aviv Dubai Championship and DP World Championship tour events behind us and have seen great interest from visitors wanting to play our Championship courses. It never ceases to amaze me the incredible level of enthusiasm around the golfing world the DP World Championship event generates in our courses. This year has been no exception.

Dear Members,

The new year has also seen a significant percentage of our membership renewing their memberships which is excellent, together with a constant flow of new members joining JGE. It’s evident from listening to new members playing in my Tuesday Captain’s morning that the overall package of two world class golf courses together with a fantastic club atmosphere continues to be a draw. I look forward to meeting and playing with as many of our new members as possible over coming months. Our calendar of events has been incredibly busy in both January and February and it has been great to see so many of our members participating each weekend. JGE recently hosted the UAE pro-am event which saw a large field participating. A big thanks goes to AHR Group whose sponsorship helped make it a really special day for all involved. We welcome their continued involvement in the event. We have our Club Championships coming up in March and not only am I looking forward to defending my Seniors title, but also to seeing as full a field of members as possible. I recently met with our course superintendent Stuart Horwood to discuss his plans for our courses this year. Both courses are generally in good health with both the greens and fairways playing well. We do have some issues with the weed named Tropical Signal Grass to deal with, particularly on the Fire course, so it was comforting to hear Stuart’s plans to address this over coming months. I had a catch up with our scratch team recently and it was good to hear how well they are doing. I will be looking to support them as much as possible this year both home and away and would encourage our membership to get behind them as best they can. If you are interested in understanding more, Steff Jones will be able to provide you with a schedule of events for the team. Similarly, our Ladies are performing well in the ICC so congratulations to Sheila and the team for flying the JGE flag so well.

In the last edition of Club Life I talked about our etiquette drive and since then it has been good to see that our Marshals are identifying etiquette transgressions on the courses with those members identified being notified. This is a great initiative and one I fully support. As a membership we really need to keep course etiquette front of mind and really look after our courses for the benefit of all.

Enjoy your golf all and see you on the courses soon. Regards Steve