Monthly Archives: July 2013

What a day to wind up the Winter Cup for this year.  A bit on the wintry side to start with just a hint of a breeze developing as the day progressed.  The course was wet under foot after the drenching it got last week and the preferred lie rule was in place.  And, no, it doesn’t refer to your best tall story about your golfing adventures.  There were a few muddy balls that needed cleaning and one player who forgot to air his bag after lasts week’s soaking was borrowing ball cloths because his was freakin’ reekin’.

And who was it that was able to slay the three headed dragon?  Not St George, but our own St Efan whose tightly clad steed trampled all over the course to score 41 points and front the judges with 76 overall.  The terrible twin, Zimmer put in a steady 37 points to tie with Oliver, who could easily have taken the big prize, on 74 points.

There was a glimmer of daylight then to Gordon and Craig four points further back followed closely by Damo.  So, in the scheme of things, the three heads of the dragon managed to stay pretty much in contention.  The biggest mover of the day was Noodles who dragged himself into fifth spot alongside Chrisper (and I don’t mean the thing in the bottom of your fridge) though if you believed the reports coming from around the track he should have won the thing easily.  It is suspected that there might have been a little exaggeration going on from some of his playing partners.

There weren’t a huge number of Seniors in the main ranks and the only points went to Oliver, Gordon and Harry who didn’t seem to be able to sink a putt to save himself.

The outcome of all this is that Oliver is extending his margin on both of the points tables but, don’t despair, there are still plenty of points on offer and maybe the handicap will start to bite even though he has been able, cunningly, to minimise the damage on that score.

The Nearest the Pin was on the 7th and Noodles managed to win the ball after blocking anybody else out, unless they scored the ace that he barely missed by the margin of a couple of centimetres.  Two nearly HIOs in two weeks.  That’s downright careless chaps.  The ProPin on the 12th was not nearly such a close run thing and Targe will collect the cash when he gets back from Nurmurkah.  Not sure whether he had a bad round or was in such a rush to get away that he forgot but there was no card in the pile for him.  Ditto for Ben.

Despite there being at least a couple of balls on the green from the tee on the 17th, there were no eagles and the pool is now off the ground floor.  The birdie tally was 14.

Nobody switched off SOS’s fancy buggy but he did lose control coming up the hill to the 9th and it hit one of the pipework ruts and capsized spilling balls, tees and other odds and sods far and wide.  Unfortunately, there were no cameras handy to record the carnage.

Ben and Whitey did a great job of cooking the snags on the barbie and they were wolfed down in short order.  So much so that Whitey had to make a trip to the shops for another pack.  Zimmer got over-excited after his mate Stefan was presented with the winners cup and tripped over Davids buggy and got mud all up his trouser leg.  His main concern was what would his mum say!

The third round of the matchplay is coming up to its advertised completion date and there don’t seem to have been too many matches completed so far, so better get your skates on chaps and organise your competition for the fray.  We wouldn’t want to see it going more than a week over the limit.

Results for Saturday, 27 July 2013
1st Stefan Belevski(35, 41, 76) 2nd Kazim Akdag(37, 37, 74) 2nd Oliver Gross(36, 38, 74) 3rd Gordon Hill(34, 36, 70) 3rd Craig Sharp(37, 33, 70) 4th Damien Lee(37, 32, 69) 5th Stephen Butterfield(29, 38, 67) 5th Chris Priems(34, 33, 67)

You didn’t have to be mad to be out playing golf today but it might have helped.  The course started out a bit wet under foot after the recent spate of wet weather.  There were a couple of showers early on but it looked as if it might hold off long enough for the round to finish but then the heavens opened up and the serious wet weather gear had to come out.  Before long the casual water on the greens went close to making them unplayable.  Some thought they were and some resorted to chipping rather than putting to try to avoid the sudden stop that greeted many a putt.

Despite the conditions, there were some fairly respectable scores posted with a triple headed monster leading the field.

Craig Sharp 78 37, Damien Lee 75 37 , Kazim Akdag 75 37, Oliver Gross 76 36, Harry Boughen 88 35, Stefan Belevski 77 35, Stephen O’Sullivan 81 34, Chris Priems 80 34, Gordon Hill 82 34, Targe Mifsud 89 32, Mo Sabih 90 29 , Mike Mann 93 29, Stephen Butterfield 85 29, Mehmet Akdag 86 29, Ben Akdag 94 28, Tony Mifsud 92 27, Rod White 95 23.

From this position, nobody has the event sewn up and there are eight or so with a good chance and still the opportunity for a dark horse to come from the back of the field and pip everybody at the post.  That’s what we like to see.

As usual there were the nearest the pin competitions and Sharpie managed to snag the ball on the 4th.  At the money hole on the 12th, Gordon was bemoaning the fact that his ball finished 5.025. out from the hole and so he didn’t get to put his name on the marker.  As it turned out Pepsi beat him by almost exactly 5 metres and if it hadn’t been for the head wind and the water on the green it could easily have been the elusive HIO.  Still not worth getting with only one ball in the Eagles Nest.  Birdies were thin on the ground today with as few as six plodded.

Ben reckons he set another club record today for the number of trees that he managed to hit.  However, it seems that most of them redirected the ball back to the fairway so he isn’t too unhappy about it.  Tony is working on the bohemian look by sporting what looks like the start of side-burns and a goatee.  Next it will be cloth cap and flares.

Brendon has been spreading his wings and branching out into other sports, in particular mixed net-ball.  Unfortunately it looks like putting the mockers on his golfing career for a while with a seriously torn Achilles.  Looks like surgery will be in the offing – hope it all goes well and you are back on the track sooner rather than later, Brendon.

Even though it is not his area, SOS is threatening to patrol the course to try to catch the hoons that persist in doing wheelies around the course.  Small consolation but at least they stayed off the greens this time.

The wet conditions did little for the stickiness of the grips and after one shot from the edge of a hazard, Stefan was not so much concerned about where his ball went, but where his club went.  Reportedly it took ten minutes to find it.  Wonder what the rules say about that, after all you are only allowed five to look for a ball.  In another rules question, do worms crawling on the green count under the definition of loose impediments?

Not sure what the weather was like in Melbourne but it was a pea-souper up here in Queensland until almost ten o’clock.  Whatever the weather, it doesn’t seem to have affected the scoring and if you didn’t match your handicap or better, you weren’t in the points.

Well done RodW for a mighty impressive +5.  That will set you back a bit on the handicap front, just in time for the Winter Cup that kicks off next week.  Gilbert and Mostyn haven’t wasted any time settling in to their recently acquired player status and settled for equal second with +3.  Gilbert could easily have been further back in the field if it hadn’t been for an eagle on the 17th. That would have collected him four balls leaving the big bird absolutely devastated with the loss of her little family.

Stefan, Damo and RodG must have thought themselves a chance with a very respectable +2 but eased out the other points scorers Targe and Brendon.

Brendon also managed to gather himself a ball by picking up the Nearest the Pin on the 12th with Stefan collecting the ProPin on the 18th.

Ken and AndrewB played their third round Matchplay and Ken ended up victorious though at this stage the margin is not known.

For the Seniors, RodG, Targe and Mo collected the points but the table has barely changed and the competition is still wide open.

Dick mustn’t have been doing so well so he tried to take out a couple of the leaders with a well directed ricochet from a tree and nearly collected RodW and Mostyn.  SOS also had his moments playing a quite brilliant recovery after a bit of a duff to be within a metre only to take a triple putt to get it into the hole.  It was on the 14th though.

Chrispy started off in the pink (well his ball was anyway) but he ended up playing with a white B51 (where’d he find that one? – in a hazard somewhere?).

It also seems that Stefan tried a new form of sledging with Zimmer but he got some of his own back and it didn’t come off – well not until his daks went into the wash.

The handicaps for those that broke have been adjusted but not the rest of the field which will be done on Wednesday.  The Championship tables have also been updated manually but will be reposted when the official handicap run is done.

Results for Saturday, 13 July 2013
1st Rod White (+5) 2nd Gilbert Demiri(+3) 2nd Mostyn Gregg(+3) 3rd Stefan Belevski(+2)3rd Damien Lee(+2) 3rd Rod Grant(+2)4th Targe Mifsud(+1) 5th Brendon Mitchell(square)

How low can he go?  It looks as if all the practice at Rosanna is beginning to pay off for Ken as he managed to sneak in to take the Medal with 82 off the beater for a nett 64 and a very handy eight points in the Championship Table.  Still a bit of a way to go to catch the front runners but with the Fred Howe coming up in a couple of weeks another double header would put him within striking distance.

The terrible twins, Stefan and Zimmer were only just out of it and avoided the need for a countback decision with a very creditable 65 nett.  They managed to play in the same group, despite the draw for groupings but collusion is not suspected.

Chrispy could very easily have been a contender for the top spot, except for a couple of aberrations but he had to satisfy himself with third spot with nett 66.  David continues to be thereabouts since his recent return to more regular playing and his 67 won’t do much harm to his handicap.

Bill is another who didn’t harm his handicap to collect the last point on offer with his 68.

Ken, BEast and Oliver collected the points for the Seniors and there are still at least half a dozen contenders in there with a chance.

The ProPin today was on the 15th and there weren’t too many names on the flash new marker because Stefan got the nod and he was in the first group.  Nice little divvie there.  The Nearest the Pin for a ball was on the 4th and SOS managed to top the pops for that.  Regardless of the shortage of names on the markers, the birdies weren’t backward in coming forward and there were 21 plodded today.  This must just about be a record though the numbers were slightly higher than in recent times.  Noodles had a chance for an eagle on the 17th but missed the about one metre putt and  only ‘just’ got the next one for the birdie.

At the other end of the scale, there were at least two five putt greens recorded by Harry on the 10th and by AndrewB on the 14th – and none of them were mis-hits.  Another player had his armageddon on the 17th, putting five (yes five) into the hazard.  Needless to say it was dennistating.

Gordon reckons he hit only one straight drive all day and that was into the river from the 17th.  He’s planning to go down to Dight’s Falls to see if he can retrieve it.  Chrispy thought he was playing on a private golf course, the group he was in was so controlled and polite though Oliver did break out and blaspheme when his dream run started to unravel.  SOS was seen to be madly pressing buttons on his buggy remote to try to summon it from afar but little did he know that one of his so-called mates had turned it off while he was looking for his ball and SOS hadn’t noticed that it wasn’t following him.  Be careful next time you pull into a booze-bus lane fellas.

In some of the after game discussion, the topic got around to playing on other courses and dealing with trees and bunkers and it was pointed out to Chrispy that he had less success in bunkers than Adolf Hitler.

The majority of regular members are now either transferred to our GolfLink register, newly registered with us or have been brought in as Non-Home members.  The Ivanhoe Men’s handicapping system will continue as before.  Those that play the inside competition will be entered into the GolfLink system by the clubhouse staff.  Those that do not play the inside competition and who want to have their scores used for their official handicap should fill out a card with their GolfLInk number and handicap and have it marked and signed and hand to the club handicapper who will enter it to the GolfLink system for you.  The new GolfLInk membership cards should be in the mail to you within the next few days.  It seems to take about a week from when the registration/transfer is done.

Results for Saturday, 06 July 2013
1st Ken Grist(64) 2nd Kazim Akdag(65) 2nd Stefan Belevski(65) 3rd Chris Priems(66) 4th David Howard(67) 5th Bill Eastoe(68)