A wild and wintery Autumn day saw 16 of the clubs toughest and most dedicated (or stupid) souls venture to Royal Ivanhoe for the final round of the David Ford Autumn Cup. The weather forecast was grim and some pre round thunderstorms and rain put a damper on things early with a full pull outs to reduce the groups from 7 to 5. The first two groups tee’d off early and prior to the 3rd group hitting the tees there was a hail downpour for 5 or so minutes which added a wintery tinge to the course and added to the puddles on the greens.
This did not deter Mark who was hot on the heels of Chrispy all day, on the scorecard at least that is, as they were separated by the field on the course. Mark added to his tally of pluses from last week which resulted in a score of +4 for the day and a very impressive score of +6 overall. This was more than enough to take out the win and his first Major trophy for the club and a solid handicap reduction to boot.
Only two back on the leaderboard was Chrispy with a square card and +4 overall. He was foxing towards the later stages of the round saying he was going alright but a late falter put the win out of reach. Damien, much to the dismay of a couple of stragglers that were clinging onto the final placings after the round, scrambled with a -3 card which was good enough for 3rd place.
Noods and Belev were also not too far off the mark at the end and with scores of -1 and square, and good enough to round out the final two placings with square and -1 overall. Stefan also played out a 3rd round matchplay game with Adam. After being 3 down early, Stef fought back to hold a marginal lead on the back nine and finished the match 2 and 1. This leaves only two matches left in the 3rd round and a couple of weeks to finalise things.
Seniors results went to Chrispy, Old reliable and then Bob in 3rd place.
The nearest the pins were closely contested, Damo won a ball on the 4th hole with his tee shot finishing fairly close to the flagstick. The 12th hole was not on the list much to the dismay of Whitey, who was impressed with his group who all hit their shots within 3 or 4 metres of the pin. The pro pin ended up finding a home on the 15th and it wasn’t until the last group for a marker to be laid and no other than Mark with a distance of around 1m was enough for the cash.
The final ball hole was on the 18th and Ryan thought he had hit it very close, but after walking up to the green his pitch mark was a couple of inches from the hole but the ball had spun back down the slope. Targe’s mark was within 2m and was enough for the win. He sank the birdie putt which was one of only 6 carded for the day (half of them to porks).
Some were struggling with the greens and were well short on a lot of putts, while others seemed to prosper in the conditions. Stef and SOS both sank long range putts on the first when the weather was the worst, SOS seemed to use the puddles to the best advantage with multiple chips skipping through the water and stopping next to the hole. SOS also managed to find a magic mushroom which was also loving the wet conditions.
Under cover at the end of the round, Gordon, Rob and Zimma helped put on a good feed for all. Zimma was trying to add some additional flame grilling to the hamburgers and dropped a few into the depths of the BBQ never to be seen again.
Results for Saturday, 15 May 2021
1st Mark Minney(+2, +4, +6) 2nd Chris Priems(+4, □, +4) 3rd Damien Lee(+4, -3, +1) 4th Stephen Butterfield(+1, -1, □) 5th Stefan Belevski(-1, □, -1)
Seniors Results: 1st Chris Priems (+4, □, +4) 2nd Craig Cameron (+1, -3, -2) 3rd Bob McDonald (-4, -1, -5)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin – 15th Mark Minney BallPin No 1 – 4th Damien Lee BallPin No 2 – 18th Targe Misfud