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Pace of Play - Tip of the Day
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Next Week’s Details
At Ivanhoe Public Golf Course, Saturday, 17th October 2026. Deadline for registrations is 1200 on Thursday, 15th October 2026. First tee time will be 0656 or first light (whichever is the later).
Fred Kitson Spring Cup – Round 1- Par competition – Blue tees – Daily Ball Run, Nearest the pins x 3 (2 x Ball Pins – take a ball or cash) – and 1 x Pro Pin – cash. Only the Play-off of the Matchplay to go. If you are here together, you play – no ifs, no buts!
If you have not registered on the website or with the Tee Marshal(s), there will be a spot, but the Tee Marshal will be less than happy if there are too many of you. Plus, you go to the back of the pack! If you want an early mark for footy, kids sport, anniversaries etc, please contact the Tee Marshal.
If you have symptoms of any sort, please do not attend but notify if you have registered to play.
Please note registration time – be there early or be square, or the tee marshals will get angry as they need to rejig the groups.
In the menus at the top of the page, there is one labelled Registration (or click on the link above). This is to indicate your intentions about playing next Saturday – just enter your name and click on Yes or No. The form will be available until Thursday. Could everybody please indicate your intentions, even if you are not planning to play.
Don’t forget that if you don’t play the inside comp, and you want your scores to count for your Australian Handicap, you have to fill in a card with your GolfLink number and Australian Handicap to the handicapper. Non-home members can also use this service.
This week’s Tee Marshall is CJ (or nominated alternate).
Link to Latest Handicap Sheet
Tom, Dan(s), and Harry (plus SOS) on 10 October 2026.
This is the time of the year when anything can happen. The weather can turn bad (or good) at the drop of a hat. Cricket teams can lose (or win) tests at the drop (or take) of a catch. Golfers can win trophies (or miss out) at the drop (or not) of a putt. The weather was good, with not even a hint of it turning bad, and that made it ideal for a round or two, if not for a pound or two. There was only one round at Ivanhoe, but there were two up on the Murray, where the majority of Club members settled in for a couple of days of golf, interrupted by some well considered (or not) wining, dining and punting. Which had the effect of leaving the pickings at Ivanhoe very thin on the ground, despite some late pleading to try to get a quorum together, so there would at least be a competition. No such luck. The registration sheet stayed almost as empty as one of JQ’s discarded ciggie packets. Assuming that he hasn’t been bumming off Pepsi, that is.
Dan brought along his mate, Tom, who can hit the ball a country mile using only a hybrid. Watch out if he ever learns to use a driver! Danny, on the other hand, is looking to revive his golfing career after a family-life induced break, came along to meet some of the gang, and to clear a few years worth of cob-webs out of his golf gear, and his head. He did struggle a bit with his reading of the greens, but his bottom line did support his claim of a handicap of about thirteen. He has promised to come again when his work roster (and moving house, etc) allow. Harry does blame him for putting the mockers on him after the 7th by commenting on how well he was playing, and how he would conjure a result from his drive position on the 8th. The consecutive triples possibly prevented H from matching, if not breaking, his age. Then again, maybe not!
Some of the high livers made to the course in time for a practice round on Friday. The practice seemed to help some, but a few would rather not talk about their Saturday results. Despite being found asleep in the bar at closing, CJ didn’t do too badly, and might have thought he was in with a chance. Sunday didn’t go quite so well, and reports have it that this did not contribute to his award of the Cock’s Plate, which was solely due to some skid-marks that he left.
SOS headed the field on Saturday, managing to break his handicap in the process. Hot on his heels, just a couple of points behind was Dale, so it looked as if there would be some fierce competition on Sunday, particularly with a few others lurking not too far behind. Dale started Sunday with five pars and a birdie on the first six holes, and you could be forgiven for thinking that it was a done deal from there. But, SOS kept his cool, and kept the pace up on the back as Dale faded, to finish just one, agonising point behind. SOS was mighty pleased to accept the Mustard Jacket, and the accolades of all present.
As Dale is not a Club member, this meant that Ken, who put together two nicely balanced rounds takes pride of place in second. Matt had one of the shockers on Saturday, but absolutely played out of his skin on Sunday, decimating his handicap, and elevating himself from a lowly first round rank into third place. Brent and Nalin tied it up for fourth, while CJ (aka Cock’s Jocks) slotted himself into the last point on offer. They probably did not want this mentioned, but SteveG and Gordo tied for the NARGA, which Steve won on a countback (if such a thing exists for such an award).
Ryan soldiered on gallantly as his back/leg continues to give him curry, and affects his ability to swing freely. It apparently does not affect his ability to snore. Mehmet and Zimmer also joined in the fun, both on the course and around the pokies. Nothing much changes, but there were laughs aplenty. Brendon did score one of the birdies of the event, thanks to a slight over-clubbing of an approach shot, that hit Raj and stopped on the green. You’d think the Club Captain would be a little more considerate.
All in all, it was voted a great weekend, even if some of the golf didn’t match. Thanks have to go the Matt for his organisation, and badgering of people to pay up, and scaring up replacements to late drop-outs. Thanks also to Gordo for the happy snaps and the notes.
Results for Saturday, 10 Oct 2026
Ivanhoe: No Competition
Challenge: 1st Stephen O’Sullivan (38, 32, 70) 2nd Ken Watson (32, 32, 64) 3rd Matt Hunt (24, 39, 63) 4th Brent Rowley (33, 27, 60) 4th Nalin Samaranayake (28, 32, 60) 5th Chris Priems (32, 27, 59)
Seniors Results:
Ivanhoe : No Competition
Challenge: 1st Ken Watson (32, 32, 64) 2nd Matt Hunt (24, 39, 63) 3rd Chris Priems (32, 27, 59)
Mad dogs and golfers on 3rd October 2026.
We started out with a reasonable field on the books, but, no sooner had the groups been set that the resignations began trickling in. And trickling in. And trickling in. The question then looked like being, would we get a quorum? The radar looked to be promising a break in proceedings and the notes kept accumulating on the table, until, at last, there was $30. A comp! Then Gordo arrived and plonked down his shrapnel, just to spoil SOS’s day, and we had more than enough for a competition. The break in the weather did last for a little while, but, then, the showers came and kept coming for much of the morning. It wasn’t bucketting down, but it was more than enough to keep the greens just that little bit saturated. Rather than persist with their putters, CJ and Gordo took to using their chippers on the green. To good effect in CJ’s case, when he sank one on the 12th from a good six metres for his par. He also tried his nine iron at one stage, but it was nowhere near as effective, taking four to get it in the hole.
The other Priems was asking why the 4th wasn’t the ProPin after he landed his drive onto the green. His mood picked up when he drained the putt to get one of the two birdies for the day. The shoulders sagged more than somewhat when he managed double figures on the 6th, though he did console himself with the fact that it was a par five. He had his head down on the 8th for his chip onto the green, and, as he looked up to watch the flight, what did he see but Harry wandering aimlessly across the green, right in the line. The ball got tangled up with H’s legs and finished only just on the green. Despite these setbacks, Rob kept plugging away and was disappointed to only manage a four on the 18th to miss out on pars on all par threes on the back. Despite the downsides, he always held the view that neither the conditions nor the play, warranted a walk-off. But, he still worried that his net score of seventy-one might not cut the mustard. However, he needn’t have worried, and the Medal was his.
Dan was complaining bitterly about what a miserable day he was having as his tally of double bogies kept climbing. However, he managed to steady the ship on the back nine with an almost respectable run of pars and bogies to finish up in second place. The only tie of the day, much to Harry’s disappointment, was between SOS and Raj who both managed to card a quintuple bogie on their way into third place. Then came a fair stretch of daylight until we find CJ, who reckoned that it was a long time since he had scored (in the nineties, that is). Gordo was back with his new hip and new hope, but without his golf shoes. Seems they didn’t make it onto his check list for the comeback. The sneakers he had to play in only resulted in one anxious moment when he went close to losing his footing during a shot, and he took the last point on offer. Which left Harry ruing his backhand tap-in efforts on the 18th that robbed him of any chance of increasing his slender lead in the Championship.
The first BallPin was on the 12th, though it probably should have been on the 15th. When ‘somebody’ wrote out the tickets, he suffered a senior moment and put 12th on both. Regardless, the ball was won, not by 905, but by SOS, who appears to have held the pencil with his teeth when marking the card. The second BallPin, on the 18th was collected by Raj, whose ball was judged to have been held suspended in mid-air and bound to fall short, only to land on the green, probably close enough to pick up the voucher from the ProShop. Our ProPin, on the 15th, was judged to be Raj’s, for the taking after he cracked it close. CJ stepped up, pushed the ball well left, turned it off the slope, and ran it onto the green, not missing the hole by much as it went past. The tape measure was needed to decide the eventual winner, but CJ’s 3.45m was good enough to beat Raj’s 3.90m. CJ promptly blew the winnings, and probably more, on another beer.
Rob couldn’t believe that Harry chose to mark his ball when it was only 300mm from the hole at one stage. After the 18th, he maybe understood the hazards of the ‘casual tap-in’. CJ was a bit concerned about the lack of consideration shown by his playing companions after this buggy went ‘ape-droppings’ as he left the 16th green. Seems he must have gotten moisture in his controller and the only action it would take was a full-tilt turn. While he struggled to stop it running off the ‘cliff’ beside the path, and to free-wheel the drive, they headed on up the hill and left him for dead. Then had the hide to ask him where he had been.
The Annual Challenge is on next weekend, and the handicaps will be set tomorrow after all of the GA results have been processed. For those not going, brush the cobwebs off the clubs and come along, we would dearly love to have a comp, though there will be a social game if the numbers do not stack up. Early registering would also be good so that we can advise the ProShop of our numbers at the earliest opportunity.
Results for Saturday, 03 Oct 2026
1st Robert Priems (71) 2nd Dan Marie (75) 3rd Rajesh Mahto (77) 3rd Stephen O’Sullivan (77) 4th Chris Priems (83) 5th Gordon Hill (84)
Seniors Results: 1st Robert Priems (71) 2nd Chris Priems (83) 3rd Gordon Hill (84)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin – 15th Chris Priems BallPin No 1 – 12th Stephen O’Sullivan BallPin No 2 – 18th Rajesh Mahto
Mud runners and the rest on 26th September 2026.
It looked like being a close run thing. No, it wasn’t some football match, it was whether we could cobble together a sufficiently large field to actually have a competition. At one stage there were six starters, but that included Mark, who joins us from the later groups when he wants an early mark (play on words intended). Then the sixth member clocked in, and then another. Phew, two groups of four, and the message went out. When JQ saw the small field, he knew it was too good an opportunity to miss, so he threw his hat into the ring, and Dan brought in his mate, Seb to make quite the mess of the neatly printed group sheet. As it turns out, Seb is a pretty accomplished golfer, boasting a daily handicap of five, and can easily reach the 14th to within 3m of the pin. No eagle, or birdie for that matter, but it does add some credence to the old adage that you drive for show, but you putt for dough. It is possible that Seb will be back for more. In the end, only seven of the eight members completed the round, as Ryan’s sciatic? problem refused to yield to medication, and he chose to not carry on and make thing worse by persisting. Steve would have liked to have joined him, as he ‘hates playing in the rain’, but he strongly made the point several times that he was only doing it for the sake of his playing companion.
The weather forecast was not particularly promising, and the forecast showers were true to form and came and went with an occasional brightening of the sky to raise hope of a break. It was never enough to put water on the greens, and the course remained firm with the preferred lies more used to avoid a bare patch or to increase clearance by the available handspan. The temperature had been pretty mild overnight and it didn’t increase by much in numerical terms, but when the southerly sprang up later in the morning, the wind chill climbed dramatically, and some older hands found difficulty in gripping the club securely. JQ probably felt that he had made the right decision to come out to play, despite the slight discomfort involved. It had been guesstimated that a square card would be a good result, and enough the win the day. JQ put the lie to that when he turned in a card showing just seventy-four off the stick for four points on the credit side of the ledger. Not quite a personal best, but getting close, and his handicap is now at a record low. Plus, his spot at the top of the OOM, is probably secured for quite a while yet. Not to mention his tilt at snagging the Championship at the end of the year. The day, really, was all about JQ. He also picked up both of our BallPins and the 4th and the 18th, as well as A-grade and ProPin in the ProShop competition.
Pepsi has also moved into the top three in the OOM with his second placing today with a square card that featured to only two pointer for the day for a birdie on the 8th. This was just one of four that we scored on the day. Is it possible that the rest were scored here on the 12th? You’d think there was a fair chance. But, na uh! Only one was able to sink the putt, and that was Dan, and the resulting plus helped him along the way to his third placing with minus 2.
Blighty has recovered from his surgery a while back, and this was his first outing since, except for a preparatory nine holes just to see if everything still worked. He felt a bit down on his performance on the front nine but he was much more gung-ho about the back nine, particularly his par on the 15th. So what, you might say, but his drive to 3m from the hole was more than sufficient to get him the dividend on offer for the ProPin. Harry was hoping to reproduce just a little of the form that he showed last week to justify the slashing that his handicap took. He has pretty happy about how he was going on the front nine. Maybe Ryan was acting as some sort of a muse, but as soon as Ryan left the group, the ‘rot’ set in and seven losses over the next eleven holes made all the difference to the bottom line needed to pick up the last point for the day. Last, but not least, the Birthday Birdie has a couple of jobs on the go this week, as he has to call in on Michael and Adam, who both have reason to celebrate (but not too wildly!).
Results for Saturday, 26 Sep 2026
1st John Quinlan (+4) 2nd Andrew Petricola (□) 3rd Dan Marie (-2) 4th Andrew Blight (-4) 5th Harry Boughen (-6)
Seniors Results: 1st Andrew Blight (-4) 2nd Harry Boughen (-6) 3rd Steven Gervasoni (-12)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin – 15th Andrew Blight BallPin No 1 – 4th John Quinlan BallPin No 2 – 18th John Quinlan
It was a knockout on 19th September 2026.
What a beautiful day to be out giving a little white ball a flog while calling it a game of golf. Though some did favour balls of various hues, including a musk stick pink one that went close to matching the shirt that Brendon was wearing today. The morning started out remarkably mild as promised, and it was not long before the predicted maximum was sure to come to pass as the temperature climbed steadily. There was a bit of a breeze to take the sting out of the temperature, and the occasional shot might have been helped or hindered depending on the fairway being played. The couple of warmer days and no significant rain meant that there was a fair bit of run available, and the tipping is that preferred lies will soon be for the high jump. The big game at the ‘G this evening did not seem to be attracting too much attention, at least among ten of the members who took part today. The stand-out (and eleventh player) was Craig who needed to dash off to don his best Hawks drinking gear to make it into the stands in plenty of time for the late afternoon bounce down. Next week might turn out to be a different story with stories of traditional gatherings regardless of the teams contesting the GF. So, it would be good to get registrations in early so that we can let course management know what numbers we will have if they are going to be significantly down on normal.
The major item of interest today was the Matchplay Championship Final between Harry and Matt, with a mere fourteen strokes between them. Matt was very keen to know which holes he didn’t have to give a stroke on. His spirits took a little rise when H got up on the first tee and went close to missing the ball to knock it into the environmentally sensitive area (aka garden bed) off to the left of the tee. A draughtie to start the day was not part of the plan. Nor was it any part of the plan! With no stroke on the hole, it was an almost foregone conclusion that there would be a loss, but Matt did own to being a bit nervous when he finished with a five for the hole and H had a putt (long) to make a square. Wins on the next two holes switched the positions and Harry had his nose in front. A run of bogies to Matt’s pars held the fort until a couple of missed putts by Matt on the 8th and 9th gave Harry a bit of breathing space to be 3 up at the turn. Making good use of his strokes, another three wins on the trot brought the match to dormie six after the 12th. Matt now needed to win every hole to stay in the match, while Harry merely needed a square to seal his very first Major, after all these years. Matt pulled out a great shot over the trees in the penalty area to finish on the green for two, and with no stroke to give, his two putts for par secured him the win. Dormie five. Despite making par on the 14th, Harry was able to magic a bogey to square the hole and take the match and the Championship 5 and 4. Despite predictions that he would now lie down, the young fellah kept up the pace, and finished with a very creditable 41 points to take the daily prize as well. The two wins did give his handicap a ferocious beating though.
Ken has been spending a bit of time at the driving range, and he was wondering why he had so much difficulty in reproducing his form there when he gets out on the course. Well, he will just have to remember what he did today. At least on the front nine, where he put together a pretty handy twenty-two points. The back nine did not go quite so well, but, on what he terms the JQ Thirst Quencher (Hydration Hole), the 15th, he produced a birdie for four points, and helped our total for the day to 10. His thirty-seven points, and second place earned him a Rocket in the Order of Merit. In third place, on thirty-three points were Craig, Steve and Marc. Craig might have been thinking ahead to this evening’s frivolities, as he needed to tally up three birdies, including one for four points to add a little more respectability to the bottom line. Steve, on the other hand was very keen to point out that his card was flawless today. Marc also blitzed the front nine for 22 points, but lost the plot a little as he walked across to the tenth. Brendon had trouble buying a putt today, but he accepted the two points for fouth place with alacrity. This left just Andrew to pick up the single for his 31 points.
The first BallPin was on the 15th, and it was up to Brendon to knock off Ryan who had put the marker in so close to the fringe that it was hard to tell whether it was on the green or not. Matt was suitably relaxed with the match out of the way that he lofted one onto the top deck of the 18th to do JQ out of the ball on offer there. JQ wasn’t to be denied on the 12th where his shot to 0.56m was executed with a ‘thin’ nine iron. But, it is not ‘how?’, it’s ‘how close?’
Ryan has been suffering from some back problems, hence his recent absences. However, on the second, his pitch shot bisected the pin, and came to a halt on what was judged to be the edge of the hole. How did that not go in was the question, as he turned to return his club to the bag. When he turned back, the ball had vanished. Not stolen by a raven. fallen into the hole. One lowlight of his round was the fact that he lost a ball in a penalty area. So what, you might ask. He was hoping to be able to complete his sixth round using it. Talk about a favourite ball! There was a fair amount of Priems action, at least in one of the groups. Brendon had one saved by a tree to stay on the fairway. Harry’s second on the 11th was heading left of the green when some intervening greenery took some pace off and deflected it back onto the green to help him to one of his ‘wins’. Matt’s drive on the 15th was judged to he heading for Heidelberg (if not The Boulevard) until a tree brought it back into line and deposited it just short of the green. The only Birthday on the list this week is for the Beast, who we have not seen in quite a while, but the Birthday Birdie will still flutter across to wish him a happy one.
Results for Saturday, 19 Sep 2026
1st Harry Boughen (41) 2nd Ken Watson (37) 3rd Craig Cameron (33) 3rd Steven Gervasoni (33) 3rd Marc Phillips (33) 4th Brendon Mitchell (32) 5th Andrew Vogan (31)
Seniors Results: 1st Harry Boughen (41) 2nd Ken Watson (37) 3rd Craig Cameron (33) 3rd Steven Gervasoni (33)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin – 12th John Quinlan BallPin No 1 – 15th Brendon Mitchell BallPin No 2 – 18th Matt Hunt