To quote Damien in his results presentation, the Fred Howe (Winter) Cup lived up to its name with some wintery and wet conditions to contend with. The water table in places is a couple of inches above ground level. Despite this, fourteen (actually 15 – Bill Eastoe put in a practice round) hardy individuals soldiered on to complete the competition for this very prestigious trophy.
Despite the hard graft, that man on a roll, Noodles, managed to turn in another (old) handicap breaking round to street the field by 6 points with a total of 79. Some others would have needed three rounds to accumulate that many. From the pack of hounds lurking in third place last week, three of them managed to turn in a better score to ease into second place on 73 – well done Chris, Oliver and Mehmet. Mo Sabih’s form slipped a little but he still managed to snare a share of third with Damo on 72. Jan Siemon was nothing if not consistent with a total of 70 and Brendon Mitchell filled fifth with a total of 66.
The mountain of points has propelled Noodles into second place on the Club Championship table and with Mehmet out of the picture for nine weeks, the rest of us will have to put on our running shoes just to keep up. The new handicap might slow him down a bit for a while and the cricket season can’t be too far away. In the Seniors Championship, Oliver, Mo and Trevor picked up the double points and all moved up the ladder. Still anybody’s guess in this tight fought event.
One matchplay completed today with Damien accounting for Brendon 6 & 4. I believe that the match between Ken and Sos has been decided but I don’t have the result at the moment. The semi-finals have to be completed in time for the final on 15th September so the sooner the better chaps.
In other news from this round, Sos was so desperate to score some points that he put in his inside card to us. Fortunately, the error was discovered before any damage was done in either event. Sos was also involved in another incident on the course when his ball was cannonned into the hole by Jan’s approach shot – what would be the odds on Sportsbet? Rub of the green for Jan but unfortunately for Sos the Rules of Golf required him to replace his ball and not score the eagle (I think) that he would liked to have claimed. The wet weather had an up-side for the bar-b-que boys as the kitchen staff very kindly offered to cook the snags and onions rather than see the fellows moping about in the rain. Very tasty they were too (the snags that is).
Another Monthly Medal up for grabs next week so we look forward to a good roll up from those that weren’t here over the last couple of weeks.
Results for Fred Howe Cup, 21 & 28 July 2012
1st Stephen Butterfield(41, 38, 79) 2nd Chris Priems(36, 37, 73) 2nd Oliver Gross(36, 37, 73) 2nd Mehmet Akdag(36, 37, 73) 3rd Mo Sabih(37, 35, 72) 3rd Damien Lee(35, 37, 72) 4th Jan Siemon(36, 34, 70) 5th Brendon Mitchell(36, 30, 66)