Dear Members
The Club is very pleased to announce the appointment of Stewart Poole as our new Course Manager.
Stewart has been a career Superintendent, recently finishing a 20-year tenure with the Gaines Golf Club in Brisbane, which is a very similar course and club to Mandurah CC. Stewart leaves there very highly regarded by their Management, Committee and Members.
Stewart’s experience and expertise is excellent, his professionalism through the recruitment process was outstanding and we believe he will be a very good fit to our club culture and the improvements we want to continue with over the coming years.
Stewart and his family were already relocating to our region from Queensland and therefore he will be able to start during April.
We welcome Stewart to the Club.
Thanks to Acting Course Manager Craig Young and the team, who continue to present the course in excellent condition. We also thank our past Course Manager Neil Graham who has assisted, both voluntarily but also through a consultancy with New ground Services, which sees him here weekly working with Craig. This arrangement will continue when Stewart arrives to ensure the best hand over possible and a smooth transition. We are fortunate to be able to engage in such an extensive interim hand over process, which not only puts in strong safeguards for the course condition but supports the current and new employees.
The new Course Fixtures of bins, pins, ball washers and tee markers have now been installed and we thank the volunteers for their assistance. As too the volunteers assisting weekly with the course clean up.
The bunker is now back in play from the 12th Green/ 13th tee renovation, with the whole area soon to be ready for play. This has been an excellent outcome and highlights the philosophies in the course master plan, with the core objectives being:
- Reduce bunker size and reshape for ease of entry and better maintenance efficiencies
- Realign the bunker removing the redundant left side near the trees and extending the right side in the fairway, to be more in effective.
- Shape the land so errant balls run away from the green as a greater penalty.
- Remove bottlenecks that create wear areas and turf damage and allow for better traffic movement.
- Remove the need for cart paths that create greater wear issues and are in play.
- Increase tee sizes to spread wear and create better playing surfaces.
- Improve aesthetics of the facility and a better feel in the he surrounds and between tees and greens.
Thank you and well done to the Course Advisory Committee and the work of the staff in executing this project.
Dean Stewart, Greens Chair
