What a day! Thoughts of pandemic have drifted into the background for the time being and everybody is hopeful that the returning travellers can be kept under control so that we can continue to enjoy one another’s company without the impediments of face masks and so forth. The weather man was certainly very kind today with gentle breezes and not too much of the heat filtering down from the north. The course continues to be in fine fettle and there should have been very few excuses for not being able to score well. Conditions and the prospect of a fierce competition for the trophy was more than enough to attract a bevy of 28 members and two guests to take to the tees. We seem to have managed to squeeze the extra group in without too much trouble and the pace of the game was much improved. Keep up the good work everybody.
Next week is the Stuart Clarke Champion of Champions Tournament. The winners from the competition year will fight it out for the trophy in a stroke competition. The rest of the field will compete for the Chump of Chumps and everybody should keep their stableford scores to determine who gets the points for the day from the whole field. Please register for golf for the day. Also, if you have not registered for the break-up and plan to be there (even if you aren’t playing) please register for that as well so that we can finalise the exact numbers to be catered for.
Chrispy was on record as saying that this was the closest run field that he had ever seen for the Vin O’Meara in his long experience with the Club. There were a dozen or more potential contenders within five or six strokes of the lead, a not impossible turn around in our sort of field. In the end, we had a three way tie for first place and it required a count-back on today’s round to determine which of the three got to raise the victory cup. In the end, the result fell to Michael by half a stroke on the last nine holes. If we had needed a count-back to determine second and third we would have needed to go back to the last six holes to separate SOS and Craig. In that case SOS would have eased out Craig by one third of a stroke.
This created more than a little discussion when it came to dividing the spoils for the come-by-chance Calcutta on the result. The prospect of dividing the pool three ways was eased a bit by the fact that nobody had actually drawn Craig and so the third dividend was paid out on Brendon who, fortunately, slotted into second place on the table with his final tally of 132 strokes. His round was not without its moments after he managed to pull off a draughtie on the 7th leaving his drive a tantalising 400mm short of the red markers. Michael was more than happy to collect the dividend from the buy-your-self Calcutta.
Damo managed a pair of 69 (titter, titter) to drag himself up into a share of third place. Keith saved himself from the wrath of Gordo by staying just out of the Calcutta dividend range. Peter also played a slightly better hand to join in on 3rd spot.
CJ had a few moments today. Despite having to deal with lies such as this and despite nearly taking out Harry on his way to the 11th tee, he did manage to put in a good enough round to stay in the points with a share of 4th place. Porks did manage to avoid venturing into double figures (just) and held onto his grading from last week. JQ had a bit of the good and the bad but not quite so sure about the ugly. The good was a stray shot into a tree by the 16th heading towards the practice fairway that caught his ball and very conveniently tossed it back onto the green. This was countered by a draughtie on the 3rd. Pepsi produced another of a number of ‘pairs’ for the event to collect his first points for the year. Zimmer seems to have felt the pressure of leadership a little and slipped just enough to come in for a share of 5th.
Today was also the final round of the Club Stroke Championship and in the scratch event, Michael came out the winner with a grand total of 224 off the stick, comfortably in front of Pepsi who scored runner-up with 231. In the handicap event, Craig’s leading round for the day was enough to take out the trophy and to knock Harry off by 202 to 205 net strokes.
The first BallPin today was supposed to be on the 15th but ‘somebody’ forgot to put out the marker so a no contest was declared much to the chagrin to Brendon, at least, as he would have been in with some sort of a chance. On the 18th, the BallPin went to Craig who knocked off Noodles and Brent to get at least a bit of loot for the day. The ProPin was on the 12th and Harry putted the ball 1.74m to miss the birdie by being 0.005m short of the hole. And so, he did not contribute in any way to the total of 21 birdies for the day.
Patrick put in his third card today and so he is now eligible for competition with his new Club handicap. MatthewV was the second guest today and he now has two cards to his name. Noodles managed to sneak in for his 600th game today without too much fanfare as the system did not do a recount on the handicap sheet for this week. The Birthday Birdie has a big job to do this week to get a well-wish out to Stef who has a bit of celebrating to do later in the week.
Now, when we talk about draughties, we tend to think of the ball going forward, at least to some degree. Well, today, Ken put the lie to that little theory. It seems that his tee shot on the 14th went more than a little sideways, hit one of the nearby fence posts and bounced back over the comfort zone, that just happened to have been provided by our own Club. Ryan could have suffered a similar fate on the 11th when his drive caught a tree squarely and finished not too far in front but out on the 10th. Ryan had a fair audience from the following group as he tried to thread the ball between the trees. Michael says he drove into the trees on the 10th and the ball ended up in the same divot that it did last week. Which begs the question as to why he didn’t fill it in then.
Results for Saturday, 12 December 2020
1st Craig Cameron(69, 65, 134) 1st Michael Gourlay(68, 66, 134) (c/b t9) 1st Stephen O’Sullivan(67, 67, 134) 2nd Brendon Mitchell(68, 68, 136) 3rd Damien Lee(69, 69, 138) 3rd Keith Delzoppo(70, 68, 138) 3rd Peter Damou(71, 67, 138) 4th Chris Priems(67, 74, 141) 4th Ryan Porker(69, 72, 141) 4th John Quinlan(68, 73, 141) 5th Andrew Petricola(71, 71, 142) 5th Kazim Akdag(66, 76, 142)
Seniors Results: 1st Craig Cameron (69,65,134) 1st Michael Gourlay (68,66,134) 2nd Keith Delzoppo (70,68,138) 3rd Chris Priems (67,74,141)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin 12th Harry Boughen BallPin No 1 15th No Contest BallPin No 2 18th Craig Cameron