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