POGO at La Finca Golf Resort

Last Tuesday 2nd of August, Tiloom had the pleasure to visit one of the Quara Group facilities at La Finca Golf Resort in order to know the first hand experience of two of the first POGO users in Spain: José Martínez, greenkeeper at La Finca Golf since December 2014 and Víctor Cros, greenkeeper at Las Ramblas Golf. Having a coffee with them and with the excellent professional Pablo Muñoz Vega, from Surtec, has been a real pleasure.

Through this blog post we will be able to study their results and opinions.

Tiloom: How do you use POGO in your golf clubs, how many samples do you usually make on your greens with the POGO sensor?

José and VíctorBetween nine and twenty measurements per green, depending on the size and variability of each green. We usually take the samples at the start of each day that the course is to be watered, spending a minute and a half on each green, and we use this to guide us in planning how to distribute the water most efficiently on the greens before the end of the day.

Tiloom: What is your favourite feature of the platform?

José and Víctor: No doubt the visualisation of humidity in greens and its gradients in the terrain, at a glance over the whole course or by time monitoring, in order to look for homogeneity of moisture levels, for efficient use of water and to find an optimum of firmness in the greens.

We can see, for example, how on the 3rd green of the Finca Golf course, between 2 and 28 July, a reduction of 35% of volumetric water content to a 25%, without deteriorating the appearance of the green, which means significant water savings (10%) and promotes a plant stress that favours a firmer playing surface.

Tiloom: Would you recommend the POGO platform to other greenkeepers?

José and Víctor: Of course. It is a very good tool for monitoring humidity, salinity, and soil temperatureand an important source of data for practitioners responsible for the maintenance of sports surfaces as fields of golf and fields of footballturf, the care of which requires precise and continuous monitoring to maintain a good appearance and sustain quality playability. The parameters measured by POGO, in addition to detecting watering and turf treatment needs, are directly related to the health of the plant and the firmness of the playing surface.

Víctor Cros and José Martínez, excellent professionals who have positioned La Finca Golf and to Las Ramblas Golf in two of the Quara Group's reference fields (www.golfquara.com)

If you want to find out how POGO can help you improve the quality of your greens, as more and more professionals do, and make more efficient use of your resources, don't hesitate to visit www.tiloom.com/pogo and fill in our information request form.