Winter is coming! Summer is officially over, a cold and chilly day brought along with it the sad news that the golf course is closing down effective immediately. Who would have thought that the riverside setting was an ideal place for 649 apartments and luxury townhouses. Hopefully the river does not overflow! Also in the news, Dane Swan is making a comeback and ikea are hitting the skies as the newest budget airline! And with it, the last ever golf competition was won by none other than Eddie, who has lost a couple of strokes of the HC as he put in a solid round of nett 67. Now Eddie is no Fool, and he started with an 8 on the first, but put that behind him to secure April’s medal for his efforts.

SOS and Ryan player together and it seemed that the wheels were falling off SOS’s wagon after he par’d the first two holes, expectation got the better of him and he didn’t quite make the ladies tee on the 3rd.  He mentioned towards the end of the round that even he was looking forward to his ‘shout’ at the end of the round, after the rounds ups and downs,  but nonetheless he came in second place with Ryan with a nett 68. Chris V put in a solid round which is surprising given he had to play with Noodles and put up with his shit all day (talking or golf??). Chris was joined by Michael in 3rd place with a score of 69.

Keith was back again and played well enough for 4th place a few strokes back on 72 and 5th was shared by Mehmet and Targe on 73 points. Mehmet was slugging it out in the matchplay against Brent, and had an early lead which was clawed back mid round. In the end it was Mehm who won 3 and 1. There was one other matchplay match played, with a clash of the heavy weights (not literally) with Michael and Brendon. It was an even contest all day but it was Michael’s consistency which came out trumps to enter into the second round with a score of 2 and 1.

There was some very high scores put in by some of the 16 members, and this is correlated to the low birdie count of only 7 for the day. Conditions were pretty good but as it gets cooler the fairway run with drop off in the weeks to come. Now as Eddie had to leave before the final groups had finished, blame was put onto him for forgetting to place the marker out for the ball hole on the 15th. Michael was heard complaining after the round that he would have to put his lawyers onto whoever was responsible as he believes he should have been entitled to a ball.

No such excuse for the pro pin on the 4th, it goes to a jackpot next week. The 18th was a bit closer and with a front tier pin position it was Chrispy who put it close enough to take the cash. The eagles nest is up to 7 balls so is almost worth the risk to take on the 17th water hazard. The Championship leaderboard is looking very congested at the top with 17 players only being separated by 11 points so it could be anyone’s chance at this stage in the year.

Round 1 of the matchplay is over, there are a few matches which have not been played out. Please let Harry know if there is to be a forfeit or alternative arrangements made so that the round 2 matches can be finalised.

Results for Saturday, 01 April 2017
1st Ed Kloprogge(67) 2nd Ryan Porker(68) 2nd Stephen O’Sullivan(68) 3rd Michael Gourlay(69) 3rd Chris Vinecombe(69) 4th Keith Delzoppo(72) 5th Mehmet Akdag(73) 5th Targe Mifsud(73)

Seniors Results: 1st Ed Kloprogge (67) 2nd Keith Delzoppo (72) 3rd Targe Mifsud (73)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin No 1 4th Jackpot ProPin No 2 18th Chris Priems BallPin 15th Jackpot

The weather gods once again looked down favourably on the 23 members and two lifers that turned out to honour the memory of Stuart Clarke on the final day of his Memorial Event.  There was a fair sprinkling of hawaiian shirts and President John declared that if there was a prize then it should go to Targe even though it was one of his ‘dress’ shirts.  Brendon was resplendent in his blue Club shirt and many agreed that it could be counted as outrageous.  With the weather so favourable and the course dressed within an inch of its life, it was to be expected that there would be some good scoring to be had.  The competition tally of 16 birdies however suggested that things didn’t necessarily go according to plan.

But, there were some good scores and the one to take the day and the Stuart Clarke Memorial Trophy was for 40 points and that was combined with 37 points last week to give a total of 77 points to Allan which should be more than enough to do some damage to his handicap at Yarrambat next week.  Rodger is going to make very sure that it does.  Rodger didn’t put his card in but if reports are to be believed he could very well be looking for strokes back as a result.

Despite all the hoping that Joe’s new family addition would arrive early and distract him from the task at hand, it was not to be and the arrival will be next Thursday as planned, just in time to spend time with Dad watching the US Masters and getting the feel of his first putter.  Good luck with that one Joe.  Anyway, Joe put in a pretty fair round this week following on from his leading performance last week to take the points, if not the trophy, with a total of 74 points for the event.

Pepsi tried valiantly to make up the gap from last week and went very close to pulling it off.  If only he had been able to keep up the pace that he set on the front nine where he produced nothing under a two pointer, 2 strokes under the card and a total of 22 for the nine.  The long walk from the 9th to the 10th seems to have affected his game and the back nine did not really come up to the same standard.  The Beast was right up amongst it from last week and he had to deal with the strain of playing his match with Bob but he was able to do enough to come in in 3rd place with a total of 70.

Harry was just outside the top rankings last week and he put in some practice rounds at a number of courses along the Murray during the week.  Another round of 34 points slotted him into fourth place with a total of 68.  And finally for the points allocation, SOS, Chrispy and Brendon rolled in with a grand total of 66 points apiece.

The BallPin today was on the 4th and it ended up being a no-contest as Eddie put his name on the card playing in the first group and nobody else in the field was able to get inside him.  The first ProPin was on the 12th again and it played almost the other way around with nobody getting on until one of the last groups when Joe was able to get within 2 m to collect some cash to go towards a set of clubs for the new-comer.  The Beast made a meal of the second ProPin on the 18th which did go down to the last group and put it to 1.1 m of the hole.  He also made the birdie to break Bob’s heart and win the Matchplay which had been a close run thing for the whole round and could almost have gone to a chip-off.  This could explain why it took Bill and Bob about ten minutes to finalise their scorecards while everybody waited impatiently for the presentations.

In other matchplay results, Matt was able to despatch Ryan on the last hole when Ryan ‘choked’ and shanked his approach shot and generally made a fine mess of the hole.  Shank you very much, said Matt, as he took the match 1 up.  Gordon couldn’t putt to save himself (his words) and ended up going down to Whitey at the 16th, 3 and 2.  There are still a few first round matches to go so there will have to be some serious action next week to get them out of the way before the deadline.  Players still in for the second round can arrange their matches any time from now on.

RodG was hitting his shots from the tee pretty well all day but on the very last hole he had something of a rush of blood to the head and chunked it seriously to finish not more than half way to the red tee markers.  This was the only draughtie report for the day but there could have been more.  In one case, Noodles was seen to throw his club further than the ball had travelled but this might not have been from the tee.

Now, the Beast has been known to pull off what might be termed ‘miracle’ shots and he has been known to channel prominent professionals for guidance as to how to play a particular shot.  It is hard to say who you might want to call upon for this particular lie from his tee shot on the 8th but wire-cutters and a machete come to mind.

The Priems family are famous for their strategic use of the greenery around the course to keep their game on track.  This was shown, never more clearly today than through Rob’s effort on the 3rd.  His ball was heading for the river and Dight’s Falls almost for certain.  Until, that is, it struck a tree and came back into bounds.  Though, only just, according to Rob.  On the other side of the ‘luck’ coin, Targe ran his tee shot on the 15th within millimetres of the hole and had it stop about 300mm past.  Naturally enough, he tapped it in for the easiest of birdies.  Matt racked up a few birdies today as well and on holes that counted for the Eclectic and he has now jumped up into second place and is within a point of Bob.  It must have been a mixed round for Matt as he was complaining about how many balls he had lost.

Blighty also got himself in among the bushes today.  He made his back-swing just a bit too high and the club-head got tangled in the branches and he completed his downswing without the club in his hands.  Does that count?  Gordon claims that, as well as his putting abandoning him, he was also gutted by Whitey racking up a four pointer on the first hole and then repeating the performance a few holes later.  At least they weren’t five pointers!  Or even White Pointers!  Though he could have been sharking it!

Keith was back with us today after an extended break and he is looking forward to playing more regularly again.  Welcome back Keith.

Results for Saturday, 25 March 2017
Stuart Clarke Memorial Winner Allan Davies (37, 40, 77),1st Joe Wagenecht(39, 35, 74) 2nd Andrew Petricola(36, 37, 73) 3rd Bill Eastoe(38, 32, 70) 4th Harry Boughen(34, 34, 68) 5th Stephen O’Sullivan(35, 31, 66) 5th Chris Priems(29, 37, 66) 5th Brendon Mitchell(36, 30, 66)

Seniors Results: 1st Bill Eastoe (32,38,70) 2nd Harry Boughen (34,34,68) 3rd Rod Grant (29,34,63)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin No 1 12th Joe Wagenecht ProPin No 2 18th Bill Eastoe BallPin 4th Ed Kloprogge

As usual, the Stuart Clarke Memorial has attracted a good crowd to compete for one of the big trophies of the year.  The twenty three strong crowd of the usual suspects was bolstered by the addition of Rodger and Allan, a couple of life member stalwarts from the Club’s dim, distant past.  Laurie was also supposed to be gracing the field with his presence but for some reason he was not able to make it.  The three of them are always welcome if they can tear themselves away from the green fields of Yarrambat.  The lack of rain means that the watering efforts of the green-keepers is being concentrated on the greens and some of the tees and so there continues to be run on the fairways but it is possible to attack the greens provided, of course that you can get some elevation and maybe a bit of spin.  All in all, the conditions were good for scoring and there were quite a few good scores presented and there are plenty of contenders in with a chance with a good score next week.

The man that made the best of it today was Joe who was out in the first group and had to contend with the cool early morning conditions and the dewy greens.  He soon adjusted as the first hole was the only blemish (only a single point) on the front nine.  The par threes gave him the most trouble on the back for another two singletons and an all up score of 39 points.  Now, Joe is about to become a father and it seems that the happy event is imminent and could affect his ability to (or rather the wisdom of) playing in the second round next week.  It’s amazing the number of people willing that baby to arrive next Friday night.  Regardless of the timing, we all hope it goes well.

Joe will have to keep his head down, because he has the Beast breathing right down his neck and if anyone can put two rounds together in a row it is Billy boy.  It took Bill a few holes to really warm up but he fairly sizzled on the back nine to coast into second spot on the leaderboard with 38 points.  Bill was obviously feeling in good form as, after his drive on the first, he turned around to the gallery and asked ‘where was the applause’.  Probably, the ball was so far out of sight that they couldn’t see it.

When Allan put in his card, the score line at the top said 26 points and the card was heading for the bottom of the pile.  Now Allan is known to be meticulous when it comes to card marking and there was no reason to doubt the result except that Trev had been complaining about how many sevens and three putt greens he had been having but his card had 37 on the score line which really did not gel.  Seems that Allan had one of those ‘senior’ moments and had crossed over the points scores when he wrote them in and it was he who had the 37 points to put himself into 3rd place on the leaderboard.  Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to let our ‘lifers’ play from their GL handicaps.

Because, right in the next group on 36 is none other than Rodger who was complaining before tee time how badly he had been playing and that he didn’t know what he was doing wrong.  Then again, maybe he has a vested interest in this particular trophy.  Now Rodger hasn’t played this course for a while and he opted to take relief under Local Rule P9.  When he emerged from the facilities, he hopped into his cart and proceeded to the next tee.  When he arrived, he spotted people leaving the green and abused his playing companions (in absentia) for having headed off without him.  So, Rodger teed up, sprinted off down the fairway, chipped on and two putted for his par and then looked back and noticed people waving frantically at him from the tee.  The problem was, he had just played the 14th instead of the 10th.  Next time he played the 14th he didn’t do quite so well but his tee shot did need to hit two trees to come back into bounds.  In the meantime, the following group had ‘gone through’ and so, for the second time in recorded history a club group had been ‘gone through’ and in consecutive weeks.  Nasty trend there chaps.  Brendon, Pepsi and Simon also managed to garner a total of 36 points and are, by no means, out of the running.

Filling out the normal points getting spots on the leaderboard are Stefan and Stephen (aka Stef and SOS) and, with only a four point margin to make up, it will be anybody’s game next week.  And there are a few others that are capable of a big turnaround so the eventual winner has not necessarily been mentioned.

The ProPin Jackpot from the 12th last week was fiercely contested but it was the Beast who was able to get it close enough to hold out all comers and collect the fairly bursting bag of money.  The one on the 18th ended up being a bit of a no contest after Michael put it inside a couple of metres from the first group although Damo did give himself a bit of a chance to be not that far outside Michael’s distance.  There was no birdie for Michael on that one but the group did manage to come up with seventeen all up.  Quite a few Eclectic improvements today but nobody has managed to close up the gap that Bob has at the moment.  The BallPin ended up on the 7th though it could easily have been announced to have been on the 4th (but who’s listening).  Regardless of where it was, somebody did manage to get their ball on and the one that was close enough belonged to Brendon.

Now, after Michael’s little stir up during the week, there were lots of people at the registration desk early and Chrispy, unable to help himself, took on sorting the wheat from the chaff and the lifers from the matchplays.  And a very fine job he did until Bob wandered in, looking a lot like a latter day Sam Snead with his jaunty little hat, claiming that he had been here for a while but hadn’t been able to ‘find’ anyone.  The rearranged draw looked little like the original but we got there in the end.

There were two matches decided today.  Noodles and Craig decided to strike while the iron was hot and actually played their second round match.  That’s the sort of initiative we like to see! With them both with a handicap of 9 it was going to be an off-the-stick event.  Noodles got the best of it from the get go and had worked his way to be three up at the 13th.  He wavered a bit on the run home and the match went dormie at the 16th.  Craig won the 17th and there was significant potential for a chip-off but Noodles managed to square the 18th and take the match 1 up.  SteveK and Jason slugged it out in the other match and this too was a close run thing with nobody able to really get the upper hand until Steve ran away with it over the last two holes to finish 2 up.  Still plenty of matches to play in the first round and if your second round opponent is decided that can be played any time.  Whether it was down to being involved in the match but Jason owned up to being pretty calm today which suggests that sometimes he isn’t particularly so.

During discussions after the round and the story of Rodger’s two goes at playing the 14th, it was suggested that the first could be considered to be practice and therefore in violation of the Rules of Golf and thus grounds for disqualification.  The suggestion was that that this ‘violation’ should only be considered if he ended up winning the event.  In a similar vein,  Bob was lining up to play a tee shot and in the middle of his swing when the ball fell off the tee.  Bob still managed to hit it though it did only make it just past the red markers.  Does this count as hitting a moving ball and thus a violation of the Rules as well?

Our newly elected President is back from his sojourn overseas and he dragged himself and his jetlag along today.  He stepped up to the plate to do the announcements and he and Allan paid tribute to one of our foundation members, David Ford, who died late last week.  During the announcements there was some consternation when John read out Bob’s handicap rather than his score but it was probably a reasonable mistake as his handicap was higher than his score.  John plans to have a Club gathering at his place after golf some time in the near future (it’s only 5 or 10 minutes from the course) and everyone will be welcome.  There was also a reminder that next week, it is traditional to wear hawaiian shirts instead of Club shirts as a nod to Stuart’s penchant for this type of apparel and in his memory.

Also, don’t forget to register and pay your deposit for the Annual Challenge at Shepparton.  Bank details on the website and let SOS and Gordon know.

Results for Saturday, 18 March 2017
Leaderboard Round 1 1st Joe Wagenecht(39) 2nd Bill Eastoe(38) 3rd Allan Davies(37) 4th Rodger Clarke(36) 4th Brendon Mitchell(36) 4th Andrew Petricola(36) 4th Simon Powell(36) 5th Stefan Belevski(35) 5th Stephen O’Sullivan(35)

Seniors Leaderboard: 1st Bill Eastoe (38) 2nd Simon Powell (36) 3rd Harry Boughen (34) 3rd Rod Grant (34)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin No 1 12th Bill Eastoe ProPin No 2 18th Michael Gourlay BallPin 7th Brendon Mitchell

Some days are diamonds somebody once said, or sang, or something.  And if you had to nominate a diamond day, today would have to have been one of the front runners.  A fairly mild night meant it didn’t take long for the blood to get circulating and a bit of over-cast kept the sun out of your eyes for most of the round.  The dearth of rain continues and the course just gets runnier and runnier and even the worm burners don’t finish too badly.  The staff have seen fit to spread some more sand/fertiliser on the greens (at least some of them) and so things should be in really good shape for our major event, the Stuart Clarke Memorial, over the next two weeks.  There’s a fair chance that the fields will be bigger than the seventeen souls that made it to the tees today even though some of them were cutting it a bit fine and nicely mucked up the groupings so carefully worked out by Chrispy.  The money was proving a bit problematic until SOS got out his calculator and Targe owned up that he hadn’t yet paid his comp fee.

The one person who will be able to rate today as a diamond was Damo who putted for birdies on the first four holes and got none of them.  On the fifth, he by-passed the putting altogether and chipped in to get the first of his three birdies for the day.  The fact that he only got three indicates that he was only bogie on two occasions to bring in a card of 67 off the stick and a pretty darn impressive 44 points (22 points out and back).  He did admit to getting a bit twitchy on the last four or five holes as he could see a personal best looming and he desperately wanted to break the 70 barrier that had stopped him numerous times since reaching it way back in 2009.  A three stroke break suggests it might be another while before it falls again, but who knows!

Now, Ryan was playing in the same group as Damo and they hit it out, blow for blow, even to the extent of both chipping in for birdie on the 5th.  They turned neck and neck and up to the 12th there was only a nostril in it but a couple of hiccups on the next two holes opened up the margin and Ryan had to settle for second place with his forty pointer.  For some reason, 22 points on the front nine was the score to have today as Chrispy managed to achieve the same total on the way out but he too managed a few average holes on the way back and also finished up with 40 points as well.

The next bloke would have to count himself lucky to be in the points.  First off, he arrived at the course without his buggy battery after assuring Chrispy on pick-up that he had everything.  Chrispy was kind enough to lend him his car to dash home to collect it.  Then, during the round he lost the remote controller unit for said electric buggy and to top things off he also lost his laser range-finder.  Interestingly, the loss of the latter did not seem to have affected his game too much as he managed to come home with a total of 38 points.  SOS called in the sniffer dogs and with a bit of detective work the lost controller was eventually found half way down the 10th fairway (in the trees).  Not sure how it wasn’t missed until the 13th but that’s probably another story altogether.

Jason has been out practicing a bit during the week and his handicap has been sneaking down over the last few weeks so it is perhaps not surprising that he gave himself a stroke on the second which meant that he came back to 4th place alongside DennisT with 37 points.  Dennis apparently gave himself a night off at the Darklands last night as he couldn’t bring himself to sit through a Justin Bieber gig even if he was being paid for it.  Eddie filled the last points spot with a score of 35 points.

There were a fair swag of birdies today with a total of seventeen which kind of works out at one birdie per person which is kind of nice.  There were quite a few movements on the Eclectic table today but that was mainly down to people with only a couple of cards in this year.  Bob still has a handy lead in the event but it only takes a couple of strategically placed birdies to wipe that out.  There is a three way tie at the top of the Championship Table at the moment with quite a number only a few points behind so there is plenty of potential for the pecking order to change in the next few weeks with our next major, the Stuart Clarke Memorial, being played over the next two weeks.  And don’t forget it is whacky shirt day for the second round.

As presaged last week, there are now two ProPins up for grabs each week (but no Double Dollars of Medal days).  ProPin No 1 was on the 12th and nobody was able to get close enough to get their name on the card and so that will be a Jackpot for next week.  ProPin No 2 was on the 18th and there were a couple of contenders but in the end, the prize went to CraigC who finished 2.35m from the hole to take out the dosh.  The BallPin was on the 4th and Damo put his shot about pin high and maybe 3m from the hole.  But, as part of the Damo/Ryan contest, Ryan sailed his out over the trees and brought it in nicely to finish about 2.5m away to collect himself a ball for his efforts.

The first round of the Matchplay got under way today and there were four matches decided.  Harry and Noodles met again with Noodles still smarting over his defeat in last year’s event.  Harry struggled a bit off the tee early on and gave Noodles an early jump and the momentum never really swung the other way until the match finished after the 15th, 4 and 3 to Noodles.  Craig and Andrew played a close run thing after Craig got an early start that Andrew managed to counter and the score card said square for most of the rest of the round.  With a shot up his sleeve on the last, Andrew had a good change to take the match but he was let down by a less than spectacular tee shot while Craig put his on for his ProPin winning effort and took out the match 1 up.  With Brendon losing all his gear, if not his marbles, it might have been expected that Targe would have been able to win this match.  Not to be however as Brendon romped it home 4 and 2.  The other match was Ed and SOS.  It’ s a bit hard to tell how it went because Ed kept the scores in his head and who knows how you’d find them there.  Anyway, the upshot was, that SOS lost it on the last by missing a half meter putt resulting in a win for Ed 1 up.  Still plenty of matches to play in the first round and three weeks to do it in.  In all fairness, if you and your opponent are playing on the day, you should play your match.  We don’t want to get caught up in the ‘AW, buts…’.

Noodles doesn’t like waiting around and after a bit of a traffic jam at the 18th, he wasn’t too happy about his tee shot and gave his club a flying lesson.  On one fairway, SOS managed to hit about four trees in a row – well five actually when he eventually threw his club at one of them.  Blighty lost his sand wedge but there is no evidence that it was a result of throwing it.  Reports have it that he actually played better without it.  Fortunately, it was returned in good order.  Damo put his drive on the 13th almost in the hazard on the left and then played a blind shot over the trees that finished just off the green.  The putt did a bit of hopping and bouncing which caused Damo to carry on like a pork chop until it conveniently fell into the hole for his birdie.  There should be a penalty for that!

SOS’s new addition will no longer be faced with the prospect of being known as ‘hey, you’ as she now sports the rather pretty moniker of Georgie Grace.  Well done, SOS et al.

Don’t forget about registering for the Annual Challenge in August.  $50 deposited into the Club bank account will secure you a spot.  If you are not planning to use the Golf Club accommodation in Shep, still pay the deposit and let Gordon know and he will work out what you owe depending on what you (and any significant others) do get up to.  The Club bank account details are on the website under the contacts menu.

Results for Saturday, 11 March 2017
1st Damien Lee(44) 2nd Ryan Porker(40) 2nd Chris Priems(40) 3rd Brendon Mitchell(38) 4th Jason Hopkins(37) 4th Dennis Tiernan(37) 5th Ed Kloprogge(35)

Seniors Results: 1st Dennis Tiernan (37) 2nd Ed Kloprogge (35) 3rd Craig Cameron (34) 3rd Rod Grant (34) 3rd Targe Mifsud (34)

Nearest the Pin Results: ProPin No 1 12th Jackpot ProPin No 2 18th Craig Cameron BallPin 4th Ryan Porker