With all due respect to the winner of the March Monthly Medal – who is a different bloke to the one announced as the winner at the after-party (see more on that below) – the day’s headline act belongs to Gordo.
Playing in Group 3 (of 4) with prospective new member Nalin (welcome Nalin by the way!) and Bobby, who was of course on his best behaviour for our new member, Gordo was taking on Andrew V in Match Play.
Standing on the 6th tee all square, Gordo squirted his tee shot right and worried it might be in the hazard. But he was in luck – or so he thought, when finding a nice three-striped yellow Callaway ball nowhere near the hazard. He whacked it down the fairway and moved on …..
Meanwhile a few moments prior, playing in the group behind our 4th group was Andrew V’s wife, who, with her favourite three-striped yellow Callaway ball, had squirted her second shot on the 5th to somewhere between the 5th and 6th fairways.
You guessed it. Gordo had hit the wrong ball and copped a two-stroke penalty.
Andrew rubbed salt into the wound by making a great par on the 7th to Gordo’s bogey and suddenly Gordo was 2 down and shaking his head. He did rally and got to 1 up after 12, but Andrew won 3 of the next 4 holes and closed it out 2 and 1.
In the other Match Play contests, Johnny Q (a winner 4 and 3) hit the lead on the third and was never headed against Tim, who managed two double figures scores, including a 10 on the 2nd and 14 on the 8th, which might have included a world record three shanks.
John’s highlights included a stellar tee shot on the 4th from a crazy hard back left tee position to win 3 weeks of cash on offer there. He was also chuffed with a chip in birdie on the 10th and banked fourth placed points with a net 73, shared with Stan.
Stan looked set for higher honours with a stellar front 9 but lost the plot on the back and along the way gifted his Match Play to Porks 2 and 1.
Honourable mention to Targe (75) who earned 5th placed points and a bloke everyone was calling Beast (76) who might have shared 5th with Targe if his handicap was the 9 he put on his card, but it’s one less than that so he was relegated to just out of the points on 76 with Bobby and Matt, followed by Brendon on 77, Gordo on 78 and Tim the clear NAGA with ….. Harry, what is the world record highest ever net stroke NAGA score?
Welcome back Billy by the way, it seems a long time since we last you saw you out there with us at Royal Ivanhoe. Indeed, the last time you played, it was a couple of months after Collingwood won a Premiership when Craig McRae was less distracted by his horses. Hopefully, we will see you more often in future.
SoS and Andrew V shared third placed points with 72. In the process SoS snuck up a few places to 5th in a tightly packed leaderboard for the Club Championship. Could this be SoS’s year? He was sporting a brand new set of Mizuno irons today, complete with fancy covers on them. Maybe that pay rise the police got during the week was too much? You heard it here first. Look out for SoS this year!
The leader in both the Seniors Championship and the main Club Championship (and the Eclectic as well) is Steve G who snuck 5 points ahead of an absent CJ with second place today. Initially declared the winner on a countback after 6 pars in his last 8 holes, the stewards discovered there had been an inadvertent adding error on his card. His back 9 added up to 41 not 40, so his score of net 70 was one more than earlier thought.
This left Porks with a net 69 as winner of the March Monthly medal. Congratulations Porks. This books your spot in the end of year David Primrose Champion of Champions field, joining the already qualified Peps, Brendon, Harry, SoS and Steve G.
The course staff member putting out the white markers was obviously in a mood. The 4th and 15th were not only way back but also way left using a narrow band of half the tee-ground width or less. The 10th was so far back a few blokes said it was in the car park.
The 2nd tee markers were as far back as anybody can remember and struck fear into most of the field, except Porks who hooked a little top spin runner with his old driver and then bunted a 4 iron just short of the green for an easy chip and putt par.
Not only did nobody else in the field make a par, nobody scored a 5 either. In fact, take out the Porks par, the other 13 players today took 91 strokes to play the 2nd, that’s an average of exactly 7.0 per player!
Porks also closed strongly with a brilliant 8 iron into the 18th that flew right over the top tier pin and was a bit stiff to finish just off the back of the green, leaving Matty to win the 18th Nearest-the-pin ball with a shot that finished well away on the bottom tier.
Andrew V won the other ball with a great shot in close on the 12th.
Harry likes a birdie count – 3.
I don’t do birthdays. Harry will be back from leave next week to take you through the first round of the season’s second major, the prestigious and emotional Stuart Clarke Memorial.
Results for Saturday, 01 Mar 2025
1st Ryan Porker (69) 2nd Steven Gervasoni (70) 3rd Stephen O’Sullivan (72) 3rd Andrew Vogan (72) 4th Stan Blackshaw (73) 4th John Quinlan (73) 5th Targe Mifsud (75)
Seniors Results: 1st Steven Gervasoni (70) 2nd Andrew Vogan (72) 3rd Stan Blackshaw (73)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin – 4th John Quinlan BallPin No 1 – 12th Andrew Vogan BallPin No 2 – 18th Matt Hunt