PIN HI Spring 2012
PRESIDENT’S NOTES This will be the last Pin Hi through which I communicate with the Members of RQGC. It is not my intention to attempt a recap of activities over the past two years. I do however wish to address some of the major challenges I see facing our Club in the future. Firstly, membership. Along with most other Clubs in southeast Queensland, around Australia, and abroad, we face a shrinking number of persons wishing to play golf through membership of a private Club. In our case, we have seen the membership waiting list reduced to only those persons who have deferred their opportunity to take up membership. We do however manage to keep up a continuing stream of new Members to replace resignations and maintain target levels of membership. Associates have an ever more challenging task as an ever-increasing percentage of women join the workforce and are not able to play mid-week, leading to a drop in membership. The challenge faced in membership is twofold, being both maintaining numbers (or possibly increasing numbers in the event of a new nine) and secondly, the possible introduction of a new class of Lady Members. It is important that we maintain the character, composition and nature of the membership we have today. We should not engage in any form of recruitment of Members, but rely on the quality attributes of RQ, being: course, service, and ambience, to have current Members invite their friends to join, and to have other persons seek to be a Member of the premier Club in the Brisbane area, all the time retaining our current membership joining requirements of sponsorship by Members and letters of support, etc. The second membership challenge is Lady Members; that is female Members who are in the workforce and wish to play under the same arrangements as our Ordinary Members. A critical mass of female Members would be 30 plus, and we would not wish to halt entry of Members to gain these numbers. An additional new nine holes would give us the opportunity to address this issue. I must make it clear that these thoughts are mine and do not, as yet, have Board endorsement. The second challenge I see lies in the area of infrastructure to support our golf play and membership. There is a strong need to increase water storage at our course, as the current effluent supply is subject to inconvenient interruption and will, some years out when our current negotiated arrangement runs out, become a costly item. Completion of the water storage project on the Eastern Land will be an important development. Another infrastructure challenge will be car parking, which is presently approaching its limit and we will need to plan for dual storey covered parking to meet our future needs. Finally, I mention for consideration, widening our range of facilities for Members, and this could include a gym facility, as suggested by a number of Members. The next challenge I mention is course, and although I appreciate that many Members are content with the ‘New Course’ that we play today, I believe we should take advantage of the land we have today, all part of our Perpetual Lease, and construct a Championship nine holes with holes returning to the Clubhouse. This is a subject the Board is presently engaged with, and I will not take it any further in Pin Hi. (cont. page 2) INSIDE THIS ISSUE: ● Captain’s Communiqué…P2 ● Associates’ News…P6 ● Rules are Rules…P13
● Clubhouse Upgrade Project…P3 ● Course Management Report…P7
1.
● JDP…P5 ● Forthcoming Events…P9