THE Mildura Open is set to go ahead despite Saturday’s forecast high temperatures.
The Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting a top of 45C for day 1 of the Mildura Golf Resort’s premier tournament.
Conditions will ease for Sunday’s day 2, but the golf resort’s general manager Nick Cavallo said measures will be taken to ensure players tomorrow can get through their rounds.
“We’ve moved everyone forward that we can and we’ll have our drinks cart rotating earlier and more often, and just having water available for just a dollar,” he said.
“There’ll be a few that are the old diehards that will play early afternoon but everyone we can we’ve moved as early as we can on Saturday, Sunday is going to be pretty good.”
Cavallo said drinks would be available to be bought from 7am, and on the course by 10am.
“With the restrictions with COVID-19 you can’t put drink containers around for people to help themselves unfortunately,” he said.
“We’ve just got to do bottles of water for a dollar.”
Normally club golf opens are held earlier in the year around April, but with the COVID-19 pandemic this year all the tournaments were pushed back.
“Everyone is in the same boat, it’s our bad luck we are going to strike a (hot) day,” Cavallo said.
“We’re just making sure we meet our heat restrictions and duty of care, we’ve contacted everyone and advised them to play as early as they can … we’re definitely taking due care with all aspects of our heat policy.
“We’ve passed the appropriate information on to all players.”
Registrations were about the 150 player mark going into tomorrow, which the club was happy with.
“A few will pull out and that’s sad but it’s fine, that’s just where we live – it is what it is,” Cavallo said.
“It’s very good, you might have got a few more if it wasn’t going to be a hot first day but you’d take that.”
