How Did a Golf Course in Dubai Get So Lush? Let Us Explain.

Up, Rory Mcilroy took in the field of Earth in Jumeirah Golf Estaes, the host of the DP World Tour championship this week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, does not seem different from what would be any other place in the world.

His swing is balanced, fluid and powerful, and his ball flies away and straight, landing in a lush green street. There is water around, some rocks and sand. The skyscrapers surrounding the course have a good contrast with a blue sky. But in general, the course resembles another place of Pristine tournament for professional elite golfers.

However, what happened to prepare the Earth course to organize the best players on the DP World tour, much less to create it outside the desert when Greg Norman built it in 2009, it looks at how the best places are prepared on the DP World tour.

Dubai receives only four inches of rain a year. Summer temperatures can exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius). The sun is so extreme that working outdoors from 12:30 pm at 3:30 pm in the maximum summer months in the United Arab Emirates is strictly prohibited.

So how is such a inhospitable area for the outdoor, much less play golf, has an installation as main that it serves as a place for the culmination of the tours season?

The answer is very careful and very deliberate.

As temperatures increase to record levels worldwide, if golf must play in the desert is a legitimate question. If it is done, how it is done is becoming more important from both the point of view of sustainability and from a pure financial analysis of the cost of having green herb in a windy and baked desert.

“For me, it can be a marked visual vision of a golf course in a desert, particularly when you are flying,” said Cole Thompson, research director of the Green Section for the United States Golf Association. “Desert golf courses are actually the most efficient users or water out of necessity.”

Corey Wade Finn, originally from New Zealand and director of Agronomy in Yas Links, which hosted the HSBC Championship of Abu Dhabi last week, has made his golf career in the United Arab Emirates. “Drume you’re just outside.”

Finn said that from June 15 to September 15, the rules on not working outside the heat are applied. But only in the morning, the heat, already above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) with high humidity, is something that must be managed.

“We feed the boys’ electrolytes, but even with the best measures, heat get people,” said Finn. “It’s just monitoring boys and make sure they are fine.”

With grass, high heat and direct speed sun grow. But in any case, the crew is trying to delay growth. Finn said his team had to cut the Greens in Yas’s links four times a day, so the ball rolles at a constant speed for players throughout the day.

Moisture near water creates problems with disease and fungus, since the grass can get too humid in the spots. To use that water to water the course, it must be indisputable and mixed with recovered wastewater. The grass in Yas Links is a special race called Passpalum that thrives in that combination.

The weather is different at an hour away in Jumeirah, with less moisture but equally high temperatures. The course uses bermuda grass, a popular herb of warm climate.

But the hosts of the DP World Tour Championship are aware of the ecological line they are walking. Part of the Prosournament promotion is a program to “measure, reduce and compensate for its greenhouse gases related to the event.”

“The greatest challenges to clarify a world -class golf course in the Middle East are the extreme heat and its impact on both the grass and in the welfare of the staff, and the climate plays an important role in our maintenance strategies,” said Stephen Hubhen.

This year, there were additional challenges of storms in April and greater development around the club, which led to groundwater problems. The high salt content means that water should be eliminated to preserve the grass of the Bermuda.

Water management is a challenge in thesis conditions.

“With the right pastures and landscapes, the treated water supply and the delivery of best practices and technological innovations, the situation is more nuanced, and golf can sacrifice significant solutions in the basins,” said Jonathan Smith, executive director.

“We are seeing many facilities that lead to difficult to ensure that irrigation water is from lower quality recycled sources,” he said. “Vanguard and moisture irrigation technologies ensure the application of precision water only to priority areas.”

Passing above all this, or course, the golf courses that should exist in desert climates. The Middle East organizes several events on the DP World tour in autumn and early winter, just when the PGA Tour performs the winter tournaments in the California and Arizona desert.

Golf fields do not use much water. All courses in the United States, around 16,000, use the equivalent of a day and a half of the total consumption of water in the United States for a whole year, said Thompson, or approximately half -gallon trillion a year. In the most arid environment, such as Dubai, the question is not so much about keeping water, there is not much of that, such as optimizing its use.

The PGA Tour equivalent of similar conditions to play in Dubai is the WM Phoenix Open in the Scottsdale TPC which is hero in February. The course seems different the duration of the tournament than on other occasions.

“People come to the tournament or them on television and it’s beautiful, it’s lush, it’s green,” said Brad Williams, general manager of TPC Scottsdale. “Then they leave in June to play it, and it is not lush and green. We are a Bermuda Grass golf course, it is great to play, but it is a different color, a completely different golf course in the summer.”

Before the tournament, the course is covered with a mixture of rye and festuous wheel to look green. But it also has an environmental and security purpose. That alternate prevents high traffic areas from becoming slippery sludge, Williams said.

Even so, as many places of tournament, the other 51 weeks of the year require different decisions, and face reality in the desert.

“It’s what it is,” said Williams. “There is no way to physically make the golf course in the summer than in January and February. We have to do a very good job from an agronomic point of view.”

And it will change more in response to climate change: the Phoenix area had 100 days of about 100 degrees this summer, and the cost of irrigation. The Players Club tournament is taking the grass of the two courses on its property and adding native and desert areas.

“We will eliminate 30 acres on the two golf courses in the next five years,” said Williams. “Eliminate five to seven acres and convert native areas every year will drastically reduce our water requirements. If we get 30 acres, that is 15 percent of our grass, so our consumption decreases by approximately 15 percent.”

That is a good investment for the future of tournaments where heat and rain will continue to play an important role.