Sorry folks for the delay in responding, but I had a wonderful golf weekend with friends (26 in total) and no wifes at Miramar, a few kilometers south of Mar del Plata.
I'll try to answer the different issues. When I said that the course becomes unplayable, I didn't mean it literally. We keep playing but the course turns hard as rock and you have the feeling of playing on a cart path. Imagine when you try to play a sandwedge over a bunker under those conditions. Even the rough, which is an essential part of the game, almost dissapears. You end up asking for the ball to go into the rough, because during those difficult years you get a more decent lie there than on the fairway.
Let me be clear on this: I don't want to have bermuda grasses at MPGC and I love difficult lies and linkslike playing conditions. But having played at Royal St. George's for the past 5 years at the end of the summer, the conditions I described on MPGC are completely different.
Regarding average temperatures, they are a bit misleading. It depends on the year and it has changed a lot. In the past, when I was young, you always had to wear a sweater at nights. That is no longer the case. To give you an example of the last difficult year, in January 2012 the average minimum temperature was 20.6 C and the highest average temperature was 31.7 C. The highest temperature in the month was 38.8 C and the lowest maximum temperature was 26.0 C. There were only 2 days in which there was no sun. Total precipitation during the month was 46 mm and the maximum amount of rain in one day was only 11 mm. There were 20 days in the month in which the temperature was equal or higher than 30 C, 6 of which had temperatures higher than 35 C and 4 higher than 37. Beautiful weather for the beach, but not so much to have good playing conditions. Also bear in mind that those torrid days the wind came from the North, which is a very warm and dry wind.
Having said that and with the caveat that I am a lawyer and not a golf course superintendent or architect, I would only use an irrigation system to cope those extreme conditions which happen every 5 or 6 years. However, you should not worry about it, because: 1) I was outvoted at the board when I proposed it and 2) the club has no money to install an irrigation system (which can cost approximately USD 500.000, an amount completely out of the reach).
About trees, Sergio not only did not cut the big dead tree at the 9th, but he planted many more trees around the course. I hope life gives me the chance of cutting them down.
On Lou Duran's question about the Red course of the Jockey Club, it is simply called the Red. When you talk about the Red Course in Argentina, everybody knows you are talking about the Jockey Club. It is difficult to draw a comparison between the Red Course and the Old Course MPGC. They are very different. The Red Course is a product of man, a very well designed and strategic course, but not natural. It's a wonderful and very difficult test of golf. The Old Course is a natural course, much more similar to British course which arise from the terrain, rather than being carved out of it. That's why I hate trees being added to it, because they destroy its very essence. It's a very short course for today's standards, with only 6,082 yards from the championship tees. However, when the wind blows it can be quite brutal.
Although very traditional, Argentine golf has not grown very much in the last years. There are only 60,000 active players in the country, with approximately 380 courses. The great performance of Argentine players abroad (mainly Cabrera with 2 majors) has had little impact on the growth of the sport.
Ricardo