The weather bureau is predicting a week of rain, of which we are sore in need. Fortunately, the suggestion was for later in the day today and that has proved to be correct. And so, the seventeen members and one guest were blessed with fine conditions and quite balmy temperatures once the morning chill had been banished by the sun. With lots of extra points in the offing from the GrandPar format the field was hopeful of some decent scores.
As it turned out, the winner for the day was not in need of double or triple points, instead relying on the good old fashioned singletons to come in with a score line of +5. After the front nine, Harry was ruing some squandered chances but from the turn, it all fell into place and a personal best equalling tally of 37 off the stick and +6 points would put a smile on anybody’s face. Harry has a feeling that back-to-back Monthly Medals might be off the agenda but you always live in hope.
Noodles was in the same group as Harry and, as the back nine progressed he seemed to be getting more and more anxious about his own position. This might or might not have contributed to a tapering of the scoring in the second half. He did have the benefit of one of the two pointers and it went awfully close to being a three pointer. The hole in question was the 3rd and, after a very nice drive, the chip stopped, agonisingly, a few centimetres short of the hole. The birdie was almost a foregone conclusion and that contributed to the rather small total of six for the day. The two pointers only tallied four so the birdies must have mostly been on the easier holes. Still, Noodles was happy with the points and more than happy to leave the winners penalty to Harry.
Then, there was the rest of the field. Matt would have been reasonably happy with his front nine but, after the turn the pluses struggled to eventuate and the round ended up being pretty balanced with an overall square result. Chrispy is still struggling a bit with load carrying capacity of his ankle and he reckons that we should shorten our competitions to eleven holes at which point the soreness starts to really hit. Things didn’t look too good on the 17th as it appeared that Chris was going to drive his cart into the penalty area, perhaps to commit some bizarre form of hara-kiri. But, he did manage to bring in a square card and share the honours on the third place podium with Matt.
It was Targe’s birthday today and he was in receipt of a few slaps on the back when he finally arrived. Apparently Targe always has a drink with a mate on his birthday and the tradition continued on the way to golf today. Targe did say that it was a bit spooky among the tombstones in the dark. The nip of whatever he had didn’t seem to affect his game too much and he collected a couple of points for his -1. Whitey was able to match that, despite having loaned a driver, that Noodles had given him, back to Noodles. As an aside, Noods reckons he loves it and doesn’t know why he gave it away.
The last podium step was just a little crowded with Allan, Ryan and Brent trying to maintain a toehold without having to get too close and personal with the rest.
The Nearest the Pin competition today was a repeat of last week as the Grand Pooh Bah Tee Marshall couldn’t be bothered changing the labels. The first BallPin on the 4th was, seemingly, a tough call and the chit had to wait for Whitey to come along and put his name on it. The second BallPin on the 18th had a couple of contenders pacing it out to determine who was closest. In the end it was Harry who got the nod. The inside ProPin was so far unclaimed and so out came the tape-measure for an official record. The distance reached the end of the tape and Harry marked the spot with his finger. Peter let the end of the tape go and the auto retract kicked in and the edge of the tape went close to amputating the tip of the carefully placed finger. The ProShop will probably be wondering about the bloodstains on the card. Simon was anxiously asking everybody if they had managed to knock him off for our ProPin on the 12th and he was suitably deflated when Brent came in with a measurement of 3.95m.
Matt Nicholls managed to drag himself away from the sunny climes of Cairns and joined us for a round today and he freely admitted that he had not played golf since last he was here. And it showed. He might have had a draughtie on the 3rd though there was some question about exactly how far into the long stuff the ball might have penetrated. The second shot could easily have suffered a similar fate were it not for a tree that returned the ball to the fairway. A fair dinkum airie on the 5th and another miss from a stymie later in the round did not help the cause. Targe also had a near miss on a hole where the blue and red markers were effectively co-incident. It was a bit of a struggle but the ball did get past the red markers.
Ken also had some problems with trees today with one well struck shot, that happened to catch a tree dead centre, finishing some 20 metres behind where he started. On the other hand, the GOATee reckons he has been showing his admiration for the Grand Pooh Bah by using the trees to good effect to keep his ball in play. Michael was back on the tee this morning and was enquiring as to how many points he has to accumulate to catch the leaders in the Seniors. Unfortunately, he developed a knee problem severe enough to stop him playing the last two holes so his lunge for the leadership will have to wait at least another week.
Results for Saturday, 25 May 2019
1st Harry Boughen(+5) 2nd Stephen Butterfield(+4) 3rd Matt Hunt(□) 3rd Chris Priems(□) 4th Targe Mifsud(-1) 4th Rodney White(-1) 5th Allan Davies(-2) 5th Ryan Porker(-2) 5th Brent Rowley(-2)
Seniors Results: 1st Harry Boughen (+5) 2nd Targe Mifsud (-1) 3rd Allan Davies (-2)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin12th Brent Rowley BallPin No 1 4th Rodney White BallPin No 2 18th Harry Boughen