Melbourne is in the midst of the Spring Racing Carnival and in the midst of some typical Melbourne Spring weather. It is a bit unclear as to which of these facts led to there being only twelve players on the tee this morning and one of those was only there for a ‘social’ nine. But, it wasn’t only us, the course car park was pretty sparsely populated as well. Other than it being a bit windy and cold, things weren’t too bad when, suddenly, on the 8th, a nasty black cloud scudded across and started to rain on the parade. Harry had barely finished struggling to get his wet weather pants on when the rain stopped, the cloud disappeared and the sun burst forth once more. Another brief shower later in the round brought the jacket out again with a similar outcome for the continuity of the rain. After deciding not to divest again, Harry came in to be greeted as the resident leprechaun. No crock of gold, just a crock of/at golf!
Adam, on the other hand seemed to be completely unfazed by the conditions and pretty consistently smacked his drives long down the centre and followed up with some fine touch around the greens. A couple of gashes early in the round were more than compensated by no less than six three pointers and one four pointer. The handicapper thinks that it might not be too long before the can take out his axe again if Adam can reproduce today’s performance under more benign weather conditions.
Peter scored the dreaded par on the first and carded gashes on the next three holes, suggesting that the jinx from parring the first was alive and well. However, the man with the golden arm, got it all back together and barely put a foot wrong for the next fourteen holes to grab second place with his card of 35 points. Enzo spent a fair bit of the round begging for ‘gimmes’ as he left any number of putts only millimetres from the hole, if not hanging on the edge waiting for a decent gust of wind to tip it in. With a bit more putt luck, Enzo’s 33 points could very easily have been several more with a consequent placing better than third.
Matty managed the front nine pretty well and turned right on his handicap with 18 points. Unfortunately, the back nine was not kind and he could only manage to scrape together 32 points. Dennis, fresh back from his trip to Trumpneyland, played it the other way around with 18 points on the back nine. On the 7th, Dennis took on the trees on the left and they very kindly delivered his ball back onto the fairway. Dennis approached his second shot with a club ‘that he doesn’t use much’, plopped the ball onto the green and it very gently ran up and rested against the pin. The next wind gust wiggled the flag and the ball dropped in for the birdie, one of only four for the day.
With none of his potential competitors for the Championship in the points today, Ryan was very happy to accept just the one for his effort of 31 points. With the year getting to the pointy end, Targe and Brendon will have to do some knee-capping and some winning to have a chance to catch the young colt who is within spitting distance of reaching his ‘tonne’ for the year.
The first BallPin was on the 12th with a bit of a cross tail wind complicating the aim required for the pin on the left side of the green. Somehow or other Rob was able to get his on and close enough to take out the ball on offer. On the 18th, Rob’s off-sider, Matt was hopeful that his would hold up to win a ball. Unfortunately, he didn’t take account of Enzo, who quite easily got closer to collect another ball for his collection. The ProPin on the 15th was deemed to be hardly worth winning, let alone splitting and it went begging for a Jackpot next week. Dennis was a bit hard done by when his drive hit the green in front of the pin but pulled back and finished only a couple of metres from the pin but 50mm off the green.
The tee on the 2nd was well back on the back tee with pretty much a head wind and, thus, it presented a pretty daunting prospect. One group, however, had two tee shots finish ‘on the green’. Rob’s finished on the 1st. JQ’s finished on the 6th after he absolutely smashed his drive which hit a tree dead centre and returned pretty much level with the starting point. Matty reckoned that Rob was playing so much like a girl that he finished with a ball emblazoned with the name ‘Sue’. Although, there is some chance that it could have been ‘SOS’.
Results for Saturday, 26 October 2019
1st Adam King(39) 2nd Peter Damou(35) 3rd Enzo Cirone(33) 4th Matt Hunt(32) 4th Dennis Ward(32) 5th Ryan Porker(31)
Seniors Results: 1st Enzo Cirone (33) 2nd Dennis Ward (32) 3rd Targe Mifsud (29)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin15th Jackpot BallPin No 1 12th Robert Priems BallPin No 2 18th Enzo Cirone