Your update on what's happening at Cooroy Golf club
September 2019 Issue
Newsl Update Graphic (new)
Hi reader
IN THIS ISSUE
  • Clubhouse Mural - Animated
  • Member Social Play - Fee increase to $4.00
  • 2019 Club Championship - Results
  • Pro Shop - Now open
  • From The Shed - September
  • Golf Australia Participation Report - 2018
  • Stay Noosa - Local Legend Partnership
2019 09 Mural Collage (2)

CLUBHOUSE MURAL

The Management Committee decided to make the Club House a brighter place with a themed mural to coincide with the new look promotions campaign and to also acknowledge the 84 years Cooroy Golf Club has been in existence in the Noosa Hinterland.

The committee approached Noosa Arts and Crafts President, Gabi Dick, who developed a design around a golfing theme, acknowledged wild life on the course and reflected the vibrancy of the Noosa Hinterland.

The depiction of a possum is appropriate as the early logo of the club included a possum. The frustration of golf is illustrated with a touch of humour. And the kookaburra is quintessential Australian wildlife.

History records that a platypus once made its home in an area of the creek running through the course and became quite famous with a viewing point and signage. There have been rumored platypus sightings in recent times.

Facilitated by Kim at PaintRight Noosa, 168 Eumundi Road Noosaville, Resene Paints Australia sponsored the supply of paint.
Mural Sponsor Collage (2)
The start date was delayed by Noosa Open Studios being a few weeks prior occupying everybody at Noosa Arts and Crafts.

Work started on a Saturday night with tracing outlines of images projected onto the clubhouse walls - the locals must have wondered what was going on. Sunday saw Gabi and Andrew Dick and Don Clelland blocking out the main colours ready for the artists, Trish, Annalise, Gabi, Dave, Richard and Jill from Wallace House on the Monday. Andrew and Don also provided the supervision.

Also thanks to Ron Blount and Grant Smallacombe for the loan of scaffolding and Club Manager, Wayne for providing the coffee.
Mural Finished

MEMBER SOCIAL PLAY - FEE

Effective immediately member social play fee is increased to $4.00 from $3.00.

CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP

Cooroy Vets (age only matters if you are wine or cheese)
Some very good golf played at the right time of the year; congratulations to the winners.

Handicap Champion - Errol Radley
A Grade Champion - Gordon Green
B Grade Champion - Bruce McLean
C Grade Champion - Dennis Beckhaus

Cooroy Men
Wonderful golf played in very testing conditions; congratulations to all.

A Grade Champion (Gross) - Phil Giblett
A Grade (Champion (Nett) - Brett Robertson
B Grade Champion (Gross) - Kelvin Brittain
B Grade Champion (Nett) - Kerry Davies
C Grade Champion (Gross) - Peter O'Connor
C Grade Champion (Nett) - Joel Kennedy

Cooroy Women
The Women's 4BBB Matchplay Championship has been played and won by Sue Piggott and Carole Clancy. Congratulations to both.

The Ladies Club Championship, played over 4 weeks, concluded with Sarah Brogden being Club Champion. Patsy Fayne took out Division 2 Champion with Maria Taurer taking Division 3. Sarah now has her name on the Club Champion Honour Board 38 years after her Grandmother Tiny won the event in 1981.

PRO SHOP

2019 09 16 - Pro Shop 1
Cooroy Golf Club now has a dedicated, fully stocked Pro Shop.

Come in and have a browse - we have some great Titleist and Footjoy gear. We also have a full range of right and left hand DEMO clubs.

FROM THE SHED

Only two months ago we were overwhelmed with the amount of rain we had now we are wondering when the next rain will come as our course is drying out quickly.

Our Thanks to Noosa Land Care:
Noosa Land care acquired funding ($15K) from SEQ Water for a project aiming to help us stabilize the many creek banks that traverse our course. A recent working bee saw the spreading of two types of mulch – hardwood bark higher up the banks and heavier mulch further down the bank. We held another working bee on Tuesday 17th September where another 45 cubic m. of mulch was spread on upper banks. The purpose of the mulch is to improve aesthetics from the road and reduce the need to apply herbicide to banks.

The project is now drawing to a close; only costs to the Club were a few hours of green staff time and volunteer time on four occasions. Our sincere thanks go to Noosa Land Care, particularly Ilana Kelly, Project Manager. Ilana and Todd got together last week, to complete paperwork, and on the form was the question – “how can we help you again in the future?” Hopefully we will be working with them again, possibly ensuring the security of our water storage. Stay tuned.

Removing Branches that Overhang 1st Fairway.
Tony Bernhagen again arranged for his mate Nigel to bring in a “Cherry Picker” to do more work for us on the 1st fairway. This happened on Monday 9th September. Volunteers who helped move branches away from fairways and sawing them into manageable sizes from 4pm, were Tony, Greg Michael, Doug Pearce, Geoff Cowan, Graham Laing and Dave Lyons. Another group next morning continued cutting up debris and moving it to the dump site, included Jim Henderson, Don Clelland, Rex Williams, Ron Blount, Wayne McKinnon, Doug Pearce, Greg Michael and Dave Lyons with assistance from Course Superintendent, Todd McNamee.

Condition of our Fairways - THE FUTURE?
We have a picturesque golf course, intersected with many hazards, lots of tees, water, and 18 challenging holes that defy our low GA course rating. Our greens are always in good condition due to the work done by Todd and his staff. We get very good reports about the greens when we host members from other clubs, in spite of many of them being much older than the generally accepted time for renovation or reconstruction.

Our tees are acceptable and will receive topdressing and aeration when possible. As we all know, what holds us back, is our fairways. Fairway watering has been installed on half of the 1st fairway, part of the 3rd fairway and recently on the 17th fairway before the creek.

But have we seen much benefit from that?

These areas are a bit greener than the rest during dry spells, but most of the water runs off and little percolates down the soil profile where it is most needed. The purchase of the Toro equipment has resulted in improvements too, particularly the powerful fairway mower which is winning the war with weeds. In addition, the Toro boom spray has allowed us to apply fertilizer to fairways cheaply and efficiently; we don’t have to water the fertilizer in, as needed for solid fertilizer.

Some benefit too has come from using the fairway slicer (Groundhog aerator) which has improved drainage on our fairways by giving some but limited pathway for water to get down the soil profile, instead of puddling on the flatter areas.

But no amount of fairway watering, tree culling, nor fairway fertilizer application will give us the fairways we want unless we address the fundamental issue holding this course back.

The solution is to understand the soil we have, and improve it accordingly. Soils on our fairways generally have very low fertility and the clay is of a type that has low water holding capacity and low infiltration rate.

The way to get good landing areas on our fairways with more desirable grass has been clearly demonstrated by the construction of the green couch nursery on the RHS of the 4th fairway. When members next walk from the 3rd green to the 4th tee picture as Todd said two weeks back, “ask yourself wouldn’t you like to be playing golf shots off fairways like the grass we have here.” At the time the nursery had not been watered for almost a month, and was still in excellent condition. The reason for this is the soil physical characteristics had been modified such that the soil profile had better water holding potential down the profile with plant roots following suit.

This nursery was developed at low cost - $200 to get a local farmer in to rotary hoe the area; we incorporated gypsum and spread green couch stolons. It was our intention this growing season to do similar to the section of the 17th fairway that had fairway watering, however at a cost of between $5-6 K, the club rightly could not approve this because of our current financial situation. If this project did go ahead, members would then see the benefits of fairway watering.

The way to get good landing areas on our course is clear; it is unlikely to happen in the short to medium term but hopefully the club’s financial future in time will be bright enough to make this course one of the best on the coast.

2018 GOLF PARTICIPATION REPORT

People are playing more golf, but there are not as many club members in Australia.

The 2018 national golf club participation report, released recently, has revealed a continuation of the trend of players not formally joining clubs to play their golf.

It also revealed that only Western Australia (+1.7%) and South Australia (+0.1%) bucked that trend with all eastern states and the Northern Territory (-1%) down on previous membership rates for an overall 1.6% decrease in the past year.

The numbers reflect the broader challenges facing traditional sports from a range of societal and demographic pressures, primarily in available recreation time. Despite this, club golf remains vital to regional communities and it’s still the most popular club sport for adults in Australia.

The average age of male and female members is 56 years and 64 years respectively.

The number 1 motivating factor for playing golf is fun/enjoyment, followed by the social nature of the sport (i.e. group participation before/during/after).

Social reasons and physical health or fitness are generally more important for female participants and participants aged 60+.

Less important for all markets are motivations concerning competition or performance.

The primary barrier to on-going participation is poor health or injury. This barrier is particularly prevalent for the 60+ year age group.

The second barrier is time and other competing activities. This barrier is particularly prevalent for the under 40 year age group and one that can be addressed by providing alternative forms of participation that require less time.

STAY NOOSA LOCAL LEGEND PARTNERSHIP

Stay Noosa CGC Partnership
Stay Noosa Group is an accommodation business with more than 400 properties under their banner including Noosa Blue, Noosa Lakes Resort, Beach Road Holiday Homes and Culgoa Point Beach Resort.

Cooroy Golf Club has joined Stay Noosa as a ‘Local Legend’ partner, an arrangement under which they provide exclusive referrals to Cooroy Golf Club.

GOLF SPECIAL - $90 for 2 Players

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SPRING SPECIAL - Social Golf

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Saturday SOCIAL Golf - No Booking Necessary

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Affordable golf in a friendly, relaxed hinterland village setting