This week I decided to move from the UAE to an incident that warrants a discussion and could impact the future of tour golf. Can you imagine the emotions that Ross Fisher went through last week during the last hour of play? He had seemingly won the KLM Dutch Open and then to endure 20 minutes of anguish thinking he could have made a rules violation and thrown it all away.

As Fisher was mentally tormenting himself with bogeys on the 16th and 17th, a spectator had earlier spotted what he had thought to be a rules violation and alerted the nearest official. Not only did Fisher hold his nerve, he did so in style by rolling home a 10-foot birdie putt on the 18th and, boy, was he delighted – after all this was his maiden tour victory – or was it?

On hole 12, Fisher had attempted to move a bramble from next to his ball only to discover that it was still attached to the ground. Had he displaced the bramble and then played on, he would have been deemed to have had improved his lie incurring a two-shot penalty Fortunately, after 20 agonising minutes of poring through TV coverage with officials, it was deemed that he hadn’t improved the lie. The bramble had been put back in its original position and he was crowned champion.

I have read with great interest recently in a number of local and international publications, news of some stunning new golf developments in the pipeline of Abu Dhabi’s booming leisure and tourism industry.

It is already plain to see that the government of Abu Dhabi takes golf very seriously and this is an integral part of their master plan for generating tourism and putting their city on the worldwide sporting and leisure map.

The inauguration of the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship a couple of years ago is testament to that and what a tremendous job they have done too. Already the prize fund and arguably the field strength competes nose to nose with the well established Dubai Desert Classic, but what else have they got planned?

I have to say, it’s great to get back to Dubai after four weeks away from the humidity, but it never ceases to amaze me just how hot it actually is!

I hope you enjoyed the recent course maintenance articles from Craig during my absence, and that you now appreciate just what these guys have to put up with – especially at this time of year.

While I was away, one thing that attracted my attention both in Spain and in the UK, was the somewhat lack of dress code on a number of courses I visited.

Although the first golf cart was invented in the late 1940s as a way for people with disabilities to get around a golf course, they have become a convenience enjoyed by millions of players.

The National Golf Foundation estimates that about two-thirds of all 18-hole rounds are played with the use of a motorised golf cart.

For your golf course maintenance team, golf carts can present a challenge. When they are used improperly, they can cause serious damage to the course. More importantly, unsafe operation can lead to accidents and injuries.

For many years, speeds were thought to be based purely on the height of cut and the quality of the mowers as well as the skill of the greenkeeper.

Back in the 1940s and 1950s greens were generally cut a lot higher than today and were slower and more inconsistent. Golfers had to examine each and every green on an individual basis to determine how fast or slow it was.

As greens became better maintained and superintendents were introduced to better techniques, surfaces became smoother and truer and of course more consistent. The downside now was that it became almost impossible to determine the speed by looking at the surface!