Board update to Members – January 2024
NSW Women’s Open – we are indebted to David Stuart as the Volunteer Coordinator for this prestigious event to be held in the last week of March. Responses for the call for volunteers has been excellent however there is room for additional support. If you don’t have the email with link from David please ask in the golf shop. There are also opportunities to billet players for the week.
Magenta Foundation – keep an eye out for the inaugural Foundation Cup event to be played on Monday 1 April 2024 immediately following the NSW Women’s Open. The plan this year is to play the same course setup (all players) as the competition field played on the Sunday final round.
Course – the renovation of the 15th tee has been completed and we hope the hole will be back in play at the beginning of March. The next planned renovation will be on the 3rd hole where we continue to have issues with escaping methane from the old rubbish tip below. Ross Watson has prepared some drawings that will result in a substantial change to the hole and require it to be out of play for a few months. The Board determined that before proceeding we should invite Members to provide your views. The proposed plan will keep the overall design of the hole but visually will be quite different. Rob Hurley will post the proposal on the website and via email and we invite your comments.
While on the subject of the course, the renovations in December are showing great results with the santa ana now the dominant fairway grass, the winter grass almost eliminated and the greens returning to the quality we expect. This was a fantastic effort by James Newell and his dedicated course maintenance team. We also want to recognise our outstanding Monday volunteer group who continue to work on the finer details that make the course a joy to play. If you are interested in joining the Monday group please let Rob Hurley know.
And, finally on course matters, at the end of last year we asked Golf NSW to carry out a course rating review and they confirmed that the current overall course ratings remain appropriate. We also analysed 3,598 rounds played from the blue tees in the year ended 16 December 2023 and the average stroke score across all handicaps was 22.61 over par.
Life Member – when Colin Kaye was invited to be a Life Member of the Club he generously donated an Australian team blazer which we have now had framed and mounted, and is on display in the Honour Board hallway. Thank you again Colin.
New Members – the Board approved and welcomes the following new Members to Magenta Shores: Individual: Esa Laukka; Intermediate: Matthew Hoye; Mid-week: Tommy Gustafsson; Lifestyle: Phillip Haw, Gregory Rector, Richard Harding, David Winterbottom, Gregory Hall, Janaka Wimalaratne, Anthony de Vries, James Kelly, Max Pincham, Brian Hooke, Colin Kangisser, Stephen Gittoes, Janine Yeung, Bradley Rasool, Raelene Dockrill, Gavin Chapple, Anthony Bradstreet, Matt Rogers; Junior: Eugene Chen, Oskar Foate, Amelia Foate; International – Neil Whiteing. Welcome all new Members. Total membership now comes to 986.
On the topic of new faces, all of the staff photos are now available on the website, and we welcome to Rob Hurley’s staff both Hannah Boyd, replacing Cam Russell who, with Aly and their twins, are repatriating to Canada; and Renay McParland as executive assistant and administration manager. In farewelling Cam and Aly we recognise their fabulous contribution to the Club, especially in promoting membership during COVID and inflation affected years.
2024/25 Subscriptions – the Membership Committee has finalised its deliberations on setting subscriptions for the 2024/25 membership year which commences 1 April 2024. Overall Members will see an increase in annual membership across all categories of about 2%, around half the annual inflation rate as advised by the ABS for 2023.
In setting the current year subscriptions we amended the annual cart rental charge towards a more realistic cost of providing that service and will continue to review that each year. The cost of an annual cart rental will increase from $400 to $700 (which is substantially less than the national average of annual cart rental charges). At the same time however the cost of annual individual membership will reduce by $300. A Member taking both individual membership and cart rental will pay the same total fee as would have been the case if the change to cart rental fees had not been made.
2024/25 subscriptions will be as follows: