What a balls up on 6th December 2025.
It must be the time of year. Another bumper field of nineteen members out to play, come hell or high water. There wasn’t much of the hell, and the rain wasn’t quite enough to create any high water, so there was a chance to make a reasonable score. Some of the fairways are looking a treat, and others should pick up as the campaign of fertilising and weed-spraying gives them a much-needed boost. At least some of the largest bare patches have been marked as GUR, but, if you finish on the smaller ones, unfortunately, that is just tough. Hopefully, a little bit of TLC will help to heal the sores, and we will be able to close our eyes and imagine that we are playing Royal Melbourne rather than Royal Ivanhoe.
Despite the on again, off again presence of showers of rain, there was some pretty impressive scoring submitted to the judges today. The round of the day went to Matt, who made a bit of a ‘botch’ of the front nine, using a fair chunk of his handicap with a five over. However, he treated the back with what amounted to disdain, and made it in two under the card to lead home the pack with a net 64, two ahead of the baying hounds snapping at his shirt-tails. The three birdies that helped him to his back nine score, helped us to tally a total of ten for the day. Harry and Michael had a bit of a disagreement about the standard of H’s putting with Michael praising it to the heavens while Harry bewailed the number of near misses. However, it can’t have been too bad with a net 66 the result. Wazza was a happy chappy with a much more satisfying result than he had last week. However, he did admit thinking about ducking into the bar for shot after nine holes, for some unknown reason!. Prez (Closed-face) Priems, was an early leader in the Eclectic after he started the round with a birdie in the first. He wasn’t sure whether that was a good or a bad sign. However, you would have to say, more good than bad.
CJ reckons he put in the proverbial dead-cat bounce today after playing his ‘worst’ golf in years at the Frog yesterday (something like -9). You would have to say that there was more bounce than a ‘dead-cat’ to produce his score of 67. Ryan also bounced back after his less than stellar showing last week, and probably consolidated his spot at the top of the order of merit for some time to came after 23 weeks at the top. Marc reckons he had an entertaining and instructive day with one of the highlights being a chip-in, except that it had followed a lowlight of a lost ball.
Speaking of balls! Prez pushed his drive from the 9th out towards the 18th tee area, and Michael was a bit to the right of the path at the bottom of the hill. A player on the 18th was spotted picking up Michael’s ball, and a loud ‘Hoi’ saw him put a ball back. Rob bailed him up and asked about his ball, and, crestfallen, the offender handed over a ball, which turned out not to be said Rob’s ball. Rob played on. Michael played on. When Michael marked the ball, it was clearly marked Prez. The perp had obviously put Rob’s ball down when challenged about Michael’s, and handed another to Rob in that exchange. Michael complained bitterly about having ‘lost’ a new Titleist, that is until Harry pointed out that, in actual fact, it had been hit at least 37 times. A clear case of ‘outside influence’ so no penalty involved.
Michael was a bit cheesed to miss the green in the 15th and so blew his chances of pulling off another clean sweep of the Nearest the Pin. He needn’t have worried, because Brendon knocked him off for the ProPin on the 12th with a shot to 3.04m. The BallPin on the 15th went to the daily Champ, Matt, who knocked off JQ, while that on the 18th did actually go to Michael, who knocked off both Matt and JQ.
Raj didn’t quite fire today under the weight of his handicap cut from last week, and he was rather pleased that he still has his ‘old’ handicap for the duration of the Stroke Championship. Perhaps he celebrated a bit too much over his game last week and the birthday that he had during the week. Speaking of the Stroke Championship, Matt has taken over as the leader of the Handicap division, but there are several players within striking distance if they can put another one together next week. Michael has the lead in the Scratch division, but he, too, is a bit vulnerable if Matt can keep up the pace or Porks can get back to his best. He’ll definitely have to avoid the sort of shank shot that he pulled off on the 4th today, as well as a few others that he gave himself a good talking-to about.
Don’t forget, we have the break-up coming up on the 20th. All are welcome, and you don’t have to play on the day. However, we do need to know, sooner rather than later, so that we can firm up the catering asap. There are plenty of links to the Registration form through the Home page and the Menu system.
Results for Saturday, 06 Dec 2025
Leaderboard Round 1: 1st Matt Hunt (64) 2nd Harry Boughen (66) 2nd Warren Capes (66) 2nd Robert Priems (66) 3rd Chris Priems (67) 4th Ryan Porker (68) 5th Marc Phillips (69)
Seniors Leaderboard: 1st Matt Hunt (64) 2nd Harry Boughen (66) 2nd Robert Priems (66) 3rd Chris Priems (67)
Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin – 12th Brendon Mitchell BallPin No 1 – 15th Matt Hunt BallPin No 2 – 18th Michael Gourlay