"Golf is a dumb game. Hitting the ball is the fun part of it, but the fewer times you hit the ball the more fun you have. Does that make any sense?" -- Lou Graham, professional golfer

World Sand Golf Championship wraps up

Greg Owen recorded a course record, 7-under-par 64 to hold off a star-studded line-up that included 25 European Tour winners, including the likes of Nick Faldo, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley, and become the first ever Abu Dhabi World Sand Golf Champion.

The inaugural Pro-Am event, played entirely on sand, was held at Al Ghazal Golf Club in Abu Dhabi. Regarded as the leading desert golf course in the world, Al Ghazal is located next to Abu Dhabi International Airport and was opened in November 1997.

Owen, who blitzed the course for four straight birdies on the back nine, was presented with the World Sand Trophy and a gold ingot worth $10,000 by His Excellency Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Chairman Department of Civil Aviation Abu Dhabi.

“I have never been a world champion before," Owen said. "I hope this puts sand golf and Abu Dhabi on the map because it really is an enjoyable alternative to the real thing.

“I’ve never played before on sand. I like the slow true browns and almost think it's worthwhile practicing on this kind of putting surface on a regular basis."

The 18-hole, par 71 course, measures 6,487 yards off the white tees. While playing a course that's almost completely sand may be novel to many golfers, it is said to offer a challenge to both the novice and experienced players.

The course has no greens. Instead, there are "browns," created by compacting rolled and treated sand. These browns, players quickly discover, give an extremely true putting surface.

Footprints are a problem, of course, so the rules allow the browns to be swept at any time to smooth them out. This means players will have no one else to blame for an uneven putting surface.

Al Ghazal's par 35 front nine is built around an archaeological site on what, thousands of years ago, was the original Abu Dhabi coastline. The par 36 back nine was constructed on flatter reclaimed land.

With only sand for fairways and rough, some modifications to the Rules of Golf are required. Green posts that are positioned at 10-yard intervals define fairways and a ball is considered on the fairway if any portion of it is visible on the fairway side of the marker.

If the ball is in the fairway, the player can play it as it lies or lift, clean and place it within six inches.

But the most desirable option is to use his/her own personal fairway. Each player is provided an Astroturf mat that can be placed immediately behind the ball. Then the ball can be lifted, cleaned and placed on the mat. It must be at least two inches from the outer edge.

ARS scientists to monitor Earth's water cycle

According to Agricultural Research magazine, scientists with the ARS's Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville, Md., are looking forward to 2010.

That's when NASA plans to launch the Hydros satellite, which will be used exclusively to monitor daily soil moisture change around the globe—for the first time in history.

Daily soil moisture monitoring of Earth from space has long been the goal of hydrologist ARS scientist Tom Jackson and his colleagues at the Agricultural Research Service and a number of other agencies. They're working with NASA to verify soil moisture data from several of its satellites in hopes that this information will one day feed into the models used for today's daily weather forecasts.

Jackson said soil moisture change is part of the global water cycle caused by rain, evaporation or snowmelt. This soil surface/atmosphere interaction is similar to the better-known ocean surface/atmosphere interactions that cause the El Niño and La Niña weather phenomena.

Hydros satellite data will feed into weather and climate models that currently predict soil moisture for daily forecasts based on precipitation and other, indirect measurements. In the future, these models will have real-time, direct measurements of soil moisture from satellite sensors.

Soil moisture is among the top terrestrial environment measurements needed by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense and Transportation. Changes in soil moisture drive the atmospheric circulation that spawns storms that bring rain to farmers--and hazards to military and civilian aircraft and to land vehicles--along with more general hazards, like flooding.

For more than a decade, ARS, NASA and other agencies have been testing soil moisture sensors in Oklahoma for use on Hydros. They started in Oklahoma partly because it has the easiest land to monitor from space: mostly bare in spring and summer and covered with only grass or wheat in winter.

In 2002, Jackson and colleagues began a series of annual soil moisture experiments, starting with Iowa corn and soybean fields, where plant cover is a little harder to see through.

Soil moisture experiments in 2003 focused on the most difficult land of all--forests--in Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma and Brazil. That campaign was typical of those conducted over the years. The scientists tested sensors on satellites and airplanes and compared sensor data to ground-level readings of moisture in plant leaves and soil, as well as to readings from a permanent network of monitoring towers.

Read more about the campaign in the March issue of Agricultural Research magazine.

NGF says real estate driving new courses

According to the National Golf Foundation's Golf Facilities in the U.S., 2004 Edition, real estate-related golf courses make up only about 19 percent of the total number of courses.

But in 2003, 48 percent of new course openings were real estate-related, and the organization expects housing development to continue to lead the way in golf course development.

In 2003, 171 18-hole equivalent golf courses opened, continuing a downward trend. Nearly 400 courses opened in 2000, followed by annual totals of 284, 200 and now 171. “For the most part, new supply correlates with existing supply,” said Jim Kass, NGF director of research. “For example, about one-fifth of total golf course supply is in the South Atlantic region and about one-fifth of 2003 openings were in that region.”

The majority of courses that opened in the past year, 73 percent, were new as opposed to expansions and 74 percent are open to the public. A number of courses were identified as having closed, either in 2003 or earlier. Therefore, the net of new courses is actually 102, or an additional 0.7 percent.

The total number of facilities is 15,899, up from 15,827 at year-end 2002, a net increase of 72 facilities. Sixty-two percent of all facilities have 18 holes and 29 percent have nine holes.

The development pipeline shows 327 courses under construction with projected opening dates over the next three years. The NGF expects 175 to open in 2004. Another 379 courses are in planning and 322 are proposed.

Closures increased in 2002 and 2003. However, closures only represent 0.3 percent of total supply, a miniscule failure rate compared to small businesses in general.

For more information on Golf Facilities in the U.S. and other NGF research reports, contact (561) 744-6006, http://www.ngf.org.

Endangered species comment period closes Mar. 30

There's still time to submit a comment to the Federal Register docket in support of proposed federal Endangered Species Act counterpart regulations, which would establish a regulatory process for registering pesticide products while protecting endangered species.

The proposal would also stop lawsuits against EPA brought by anti-pesticide activist groups. Learn about the issue and submit comment at http://www.gcsaa.org/members/govrel/esa_campaign.asp before the docket closes March 30. For more information, contact the GCSAA government relations staff at (800) 472-7878, ext. 619.