Category Archives: Club News

You could be forgiven for imagining that we had been transported back in time to the middle of winter. The temperature was barely into double figures and the wind-chill made it feel a lot less than that. Plus, there was the prospect of rain from the occasional angry looking cloud. But, the clouds deigned not to rain and the sun broke through from time to time. It turned out to be a pretty nice day for golf for the twelve members who ignored the forecasts and made it to the course to try their luck as the 2019 playing year winds down to its inevitable conclusion.

The championship leader can be caught but a few things have to fall into place. Porks has given a chance with a couple of absences in the remaining weeks and, if the chancers can get high enough placings, it is possible that it could be a tight run thing in the end. The other big question is, can he make the tonne?

Gordo started off pretty well and looked to be doing it easy when he turned in positive territory after the first nine. Now, whether he just got the yips or he started to think about his handicap for the Vin O’Meara, there were a few scoring chances that went begging on the back and the round finished just one on the wrong side of centre. Just about right to get a bit of a stroke back, thought Captain P. Little did he realise that -1 was going to be the winning score and he became the only person to lose strokes in the whole field. What really rubbed salt into the wounds was the ‘unnecessary’ birdie on the 4th but it did contribute to the eight that we scored as a group.

There was a veritable squadron of players fronting the judges for second place and SOS was torn in trying to decide whether he could afford to extend the ball-run beyond the two that went to Gordon for his win. Chrispy was calling for a countback to determine who should get the third ball. He still would have missed out as he would have been beaten by none other than his little boy, Jake. And Noodles had no chance (in the countback, that is).

Harry had suffered quite a number of ‘just missed’ putts including a careless short range miss on the 11th. So, when he lagged one just shy of the hole on the 12th, the consensus was that he should rest and take his time. So careful was he about ‘taking his time’ that he was walking away from the green with his ball marker still firmly in place marking where the ball had been. And he hadn’t taken the putt either. A bit of a burst of form as the round closed brought him home in third place.

Dennis was apparently playing hooky today and that doesn’t mean that he had skipped school. It seems that his usual arrow straightness has taken a nasty turn to the left. A bit like his politics, perhaps. Blighty played his normal boring game – just ask him any time and Adam had to dash off and nobody was game to dob him in for anything. But they all managed to share 4th place. That left Targe and Stef to take out the last points on offer for the day.

The sharp eyed among you will have noticed that, so far, there have been eleven players mentioned in despatches. Shall we just say that Peter took some beautiful divots today, especially when hitting from the tee. He has a big game on tomorrow so he was planning to head straight to the driving range to try to sort something out. And, while on the subject of sorting things out, Chrispy reckons that, after 30 years of playing golf, he has worked out what he has been doing wrong and the Seniors Championship next year is as good as his.

The BallPins today were on the 12th and the 18th and it was left to Gordon to put his name on both. With this and his comp win (plus a ball-run from last week) Gordon was pretty much up to his balls at the end of the day. The ProPin was on the 15th and Gordon had another go but finished about half a metre out of range. This left it up to SOS, who made it to 4.1m, to take out the money.

Gordo could have been forgiven for thinking that he was wearing some sort of a target today. Dennis had a go at taking his head off while he was standing on the 1st green waiting for Dennis to make his third shot on the second. Then, as he waited on the 7th tee, Jake managed to slice one from the 6th fairway, between Harry’s legs, and hit Gordon on the foot.

Targe covered a fair bit of territory today by traversing from one side of the fairway to the other. His tee shot on the 11th was heading a fair bit to the right and Peter opined that it would hit something and finish OK. Which it promptly did. Nice call, Pete. Stef was up to his usual tricks today and went close to driving the green on the 9th and 11th to name just a couple.

Results for Saturday, 09 November 2019
1st Gordon Hill(-1) 2nd Stephen Butterfield(-2) 2nd Chris Priems(-2) 2nd Jake Priems(-2) 2nd Stephen O’Sullivan(-2) 3rd Harry Boughen(-3) 4th Andrew Blight(-4) 4th Adam King(-4) 4th Dennis Ward(-4) 5th Stefan Belevski(-5) 5th Targe Mifsud(-5)

Seniors Results: 1st Gordon Hill (-1) 2nd Harry Boughen (-3) 3rd Andrew Blight (-4) 3rd Dennis Ward (-4)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin15th Stephen O’Sullivan BallPin No 1 12th Gordon Hill BallPin No 2 18th Gordon Hill

The forecast was for heavy rain all day for the November monthly medal. However things looked promising when at the start of play the sun was almost cracking through the gaps in the clouds and it looked as though it could hold off. And it did. For about 2 or 3 holes, then it rained non stop for the remainder of the round and weekend. It was not enough to deter most of the 17 members who put on the wet weather gear and hacked around the course.

Of the 17, Priemsy decided to hang up the spikes after 9 on the account that the slippery conditions were not too good for his ankle. Mehmet also decided to call it quits after 9, but he was only down for a catch up and coffee in the morning and the 9 holes was just a bonus. At around the 13th hole a couple of the groups joined together to make up groups of 6 and 5 due to the somewhat slower play due to the conditions and the smaller groupings.

Scoring was tough with the exception of 1, and it was Peps who played a blistering round considering the conditions and easily won the medal with a nett 65 and 1 over the stick!. He also scored 3 birdies out of 4 for the day in total which is a great effort considering the soaked clothes and gloves and shoes.

A bit further back was Gordon who played to a very respectable 69 nett. A further stoke back was Noods who was looking very good early on but faltered on the last few holes to end up in third. He was also joined by Beast with a nett 70.

The scoring ended up being quite close for the place getters with Matt and Bob rounding out the points finishers with 72 and 73. You might be thinking that due to the continuous rain the scoring was not that bad. Well for some of the field, yes but there ended up being none less than 7 players who cracked the ton for the round. This included a few 10’s and a lot of ‘s and 9’s.

Michael was back after another lengthy stint on the sidelines and although he did not score points he was close on all the nearest the pins in typical Michael style. He took home the prize on the 12th, but Blighty was probably likely to be closer but he forgot to mark it until after the hole was finished. He was not too disheartened as he putted his birdie attempt down the hill and proclaimed “oh that’s way too hard” as it hurtled down the hill. It was dead centre of the flag however and manged to pop up into the hole for Birdie.

For the 18th ball hole, Michael was beaten by Peps, and again on the 15th, pespi hit his tee shot to 3.5m to take the cash away from him. Noodles claimed that his group were going 5 ways in the prize after peps hit is close, but Peps was having none of that.

There were a few drafties with Ken shanking his tee on the 1st, and possibly another later on, Blighty was awfully close on the 15th and porks blasted quite a few tee shots out of bounds throughout the day.

Reminder that the annual trip away for 2020 has been announced to be in Cobram in October, please refer to Matt Hunts email for details. He is asking that members reply to advise their expended attendance and a deposit will be required book a place.

Happy birthday to Damian who is celebrating the big five oh, and also Craig and Mal who also have birthdays this week.

Results for Saturday, 02 November 2019
1st Andrew Petricola(65) 2nd Gordon Hill(69) 3rd Stephen Butterfield(70) 3rd Bill Eastoe(70) 4th Matt Hunt(72) 5th Bob McDonald(73)

Seniors Results: 1st Gordon Hill (69) 2nd Bill Eastoe (70) 3rd Bob McDonald (73)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin15th Andrew Petricola BallPin No 1 12th Michael Gourlay BallPin No 2 18th Andrew Petricola

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

If you don’t like Melbourne weather, just hang around for five minutes, so the saying goes. Today was a bit like that. At quarter past six it bucketted down. At seven it was fine. At nine the sun shone and there were vague thoughts of removing layers. By ten it was cloudy and gusty. By eleven, there were wishes for more layers. And it all ended with sixteen people, hunched over like half open pocket knives, huddled around the barbeque. Not that there was much warmth to be had as the first group finished so far ahead of the second that the cooking was done and dusted before most of the field got in.

The course was in good nick again and there was not too much evidence of the ‘gravelly’ sand that was spread on the greens during the week. They are still running pretty fast and there was a mix of putts well past and some left teetering just short as players tried to adjust for the pace. At least the 14th pin was on a more level part of the green. All in all, no reason why somebody couldn’t have done a Bradbury to take out the trophy. We did have a ‘reverse’ Bradbury with Rob plummeting from his share of third place to take out the NARGA for the event.

As it turned out, the battle for the goodies was concentrated in the last group on the course and it was the steady, consistent performers that finished on the podium. And, in the end, the man of the moment was Chrispy, who is still preferring to carry his bag though he does sometimes wonder why he includes so many clubs. It seems that a push buggy is just too complicated for our Chris and he reckons that his switch to playing in runners has helped both his ankle and his game. So, it’s goodbye to the cushy handicap and, if the Birthday Birdie is to be believed, it will be goodbye to the junior ranks, but not until the start of the new season even though the birthday is this week. Before he can join, however, he has to learn the secret Seniors Handshake. The only problem is, nobody in the Seniors can remember what it is. Have a good one old fellah.

And, while the Birthday Birdie is at it, good wishes are also due to Enzo who adds another candle to the cake this week as well. The march of time (well it was only a week) did not affect Enzo’s game too much and he came in with one on the wrong side of the ledger to finish with a square card overall. Ken was looking a bit nervous around tee time and some offers were made of a supply of Butter Menthols but, as it turned out, the lozenges were not needed and Ken, too, finished all square to share second place with Enzo.

There seems to be a bit of a competition developing between Porks and Dave and, by dint of their matched scorecards last week, they were playing in the same group today. Lo and behold, they produced matching cards again today and so finished all tied up for third place with -2 overall.

SOS started the round in positive territory and didn’t put too many feet wrong to finish the first nine on +2. Another couple of pluses early on the back started to give him a sniff of a potential Bradbury run. A shank from the tee on the 15th started the rot and four consecutive losses had SOS reaching for the lozenges. The Beast doesn’t seems to be able to get it out of his head that he is no longer on ten and doesn’t get a stroke on the first any more and he obviously browbeat Enzo to change the final totals to agree what was on his card. Brendon and Blighty finished off the points gathering with their final tallies of -4.

On the day, Noodles, Porks and Dave had the best of the conditions with their +2 apiece. Brendon was just one point behind and that might have been different if he hadn’t changed sports to cricket on the 16th when he lunged at an out-swinger from the tee and skied it to an easy catch at point. Chrispy, SOS and Blighty had the next best with square. Blighty apparently managed a draughtie on the 18th but still managed to square the hole which is no mean feat with the pin up on the back deck. Ken also joined the draughtie club on an unspecified hole but for some reason he was taking a rain-check until next week when, it seems, that most of his playing companions won’t be playing. Cunning, what!

The first BallPin was on the 4th and it was quite a tricky target with the tee well back and the pin to the left side of the green. Not too tricky for Dave, though, as he collected himself yet another ball. The pin placement for the ball on the 18th proved too difficult for everybody and there will be a Jackpot to next week. The ProPin on the 15th fell to Jason at 3.8m and, yes, he is allowed to win even if he did not play last week. He didn’t get his birdie so this was not one of the nine that we scored as a group today.

As Rob was strolling down from the 10th tee he was telling a story about a ‘Tight-arse Tuesday’ visit to the drive-in many years ago. So intent on his tale-telling was Rob, that he strayed from the made path, slipped on the grassy slope, sat on his ‘Tight-arse’ and let go of his buggy which headed off down the slope and promptly capsized spilling all sorts of golfing paraphernalia as it went. SOS couldn’t decide which part of the episode was the funniest. Fortunately, the only thing injured was some pride. And, despite his ‘reverse Bradbury’ Rob was remarkably restrained the whole round. He also reckons we should change the term for halving a hole from square to ‘scab’ – because it helps to stop the bleeding!

The wind today could be a bit gusty at times and. while the cooks were working their magic on the barbeque, one particular gust carried away all sorts of bits and pieces including a large sheet of alfoil. Noodles took off after it and each time he reached for it, the wind gusted and took it further afield. In the end he chased it almost back down to the 16th green before he finally captured it. A bit of a change to chasing women.

Results for Saturday, 19 October 2019
1st Chris Priems(+1, □, +1) 2nd Ken Watson(+1, -1, □) 2nd Enzo Cirone(+1, -1, □) 3rd Ryan Porker(-4, +2, -2) 3rd David Mullenger(-4, +2, -2) 4th Stephen O’Sullivan(-3, □, -3) 4th Bill Eastoe(-2, -1, -3) 5th Brendon Mitchell(-5, +1, -4) 5th Andrew Blight(-4, □, -4)

Seniors Results: 1st Enzo Cirone (-1,1,0) 2nd Bill Eastoe (-1,-2,-3) 3rd Andrew Blight (□)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin15th Jason Hopkins BallPin No 1 4th David Mullenger BallPin No 2 18th Jackpot