Hacienda Riquelme - Golf Course Condition

Following numerous concerns, complaints and vociferous comments over the last weeks regarding the very poor current condition of our Hacienda Riquelme golf course, an on-course inspection meeting took place last week (23/4/14) between Colin Archer (HR Committee member responsible for Golf), Enrique Herrero (Director General of IRM - the golf course owners) and Francisco Allo (Head greenkeeper from Selprats - the golf course maintenance company).

The topics of discussion during the inspection were the very poor condition of the greens, the lack of water in the lakes, the increasing damage to tees and fairways being caused by rabbits, the hardness of the sand in the bunkers and the poor condition of the netting around the driving range after damage suffered in recent high winds. The netting is being replaced as this is being written.

Below is the communication the Committee has subsequently received from Enrique Herrero of IRM which we pass to you …...

“Here I include the explanation of the situation of the golf course that we have been having for the last weeks. Please resend it to the rest of the HR residents as an official statement coming from the IRM company.

 1) The grass variety in Hacienda Riquelme is Paspalum Vaginatum that gets the winter appearance once the temperature is below 7 degrees. This means that during the winter presents a brown appearance and without any signs of activity. In order to avoid this poor appearance during the winter we have to do several re-seeds of other varieties that are more resistant to the winter temperatures but don´t stand the high summer temperatures, so that they start to die gradually during the summer, helped by the application of some herbicides to end up with a playing surface which is fully Paspalum. The last re-seed was with Poa Trivialis.

The consequence of doing this operation year by year is a weakness of the original variety (Paspalum Vaginatum) as well as a contamination of bad seeds that end up spoiling the condition of the greens. To avoid this damage it is convenient to stop the re-seeding for one or two consecutive years within a period of 10 years. The problem of those years is that the aesthetic appearance of the greens is very poor even on the first stages of the spring phase, and it also affects the rolling of the ball.

What is more, the growing of the Paspalum in spring is very irregular as you can see in the fairways of Alhama, Saurines or Hacienda Riquelme. It also depends on the year; there are some years with long periods of evolution as unlikely the current year. There are physiological aspects that don´t have a simple explanation but in general, it is much more difficult when the autumn temperatures fall very fast and the spring season we have alternatively very warm weeks with cold days in the middle.

In this moment we are mowing the grass daily, using the rollers and making weekly vertical cuts to accelerate the whole process.

2) Regarding the rabbit damages, the fact that the native areas remain clean of bad seeds means that the rabbits are force to come out of their refuges on to the golf course to eat, chew the grass (main damages) and dig on the bunker sand. Currently we have license to capture them with cages but they got use to those and it is hard for it now to be effective. We are searching for other methods of keeping away those rabbits without needing of capturing them, and we are going to try an ecological repellent that apparently will keep them away.

3) The hardness of the bunker sand is difficult to avoid considering that our irrigation method is with sprinklers. What is more, it needs a certain degree of humidity to settle the sand on the bunkers.

4) Regarding the lakes as you know we are starting to refill the lakes; we have just started with the lake at the eleventh hole and we are going to fill the others gradually.

Thanks for your interest and cooperation

Best Regards,

Enrique Herrero Gil
IRM Director General”

The HR Committee’s own notes and views on this same meeting can be found as an attached document in the minutes of the recent April Committee Meeting held 29/4/14 when they are published.

Colin Archer

HR Committee Member – Golf