You could be forgiven for thinking that there had been a couple of inches of rain on the course over-night but it seems that the green-keepers are just taking full advantage of the allocation from the Yarra or where-ever they are sourcing the water from these days though it is hard to imagine that the new storm-water system would be contributing much given the lack of precipitation over the last several weeks.  Still, if the course was too dry and bony there’d probably be comments about that as well.

There got to be a bit of warmth in the air and the humidity was up a bit as well so a few people got a bit sticky.  Not to mention the flies that were a bit sticky as well.

No flies on Targe though as he shrugged off the softness underfoot, the heat and humidity and the flies to take out the event with plus three points.  Nothing spectacular, just good steady golf and squaring over half the course.  So not a lot of minus signs on the card.

He wasn’t out in front by too much though with a fair posse right on his tail just a single point behind.  Zimmer, Eddie and Brendon all started out well but seems to have faded just a little on the back nine.  All three had the same results out and back with plus 3 and minus 1.

An even larger group of likely types came just another stroke back and included Craig, RodG, Mehmet and Keith.  Three of the four had very even halves but Keith’s disbelief at how well he was playing got the better of him and he turned a plus five on the front into a minus four on the back to finish in the middle of the field.

The podium got to be pretty crowded today with another three handing in square cards and a further four coming in with minus one.  Which sort of begs the question, just who didn’t get points today?

The ProPin was on the 4th and was somebody heard to ask why was it put on there?  Well, what do you know, it didn’t go off and so there will be a Jackpot for the hungry types to fight over next week.  Eddie is keeping up his supply of balls by taking out the Nearest the Pin on the 15th.  There was also a swag of birdies today with a total of 14.  Craig didn’t do his Eclectic score any harm by gathering four (yes 4) in a row between the 8th and the 11th.  Not bad for a bloke who claims to be not getting too much sleep (wonder why that would be?).  Maybe he dozed off and that helped his game.

Craig was playing Eddie in the Matchplay and that run turned the whole match around and it ended coming down to the wire all square and so the result had to be decided by a chip-off.  Neither chip inspired much confidence, but Craig was able to hold his nerve to sink the putt and take the match.  In other matches, RodG took on Chrispy and it was nip and tuck until the last two holes before RodG finished victorious, 2 up.  Gordon and Ken also did battle to an even closer result with Gordon clinching it on the last, 1 up, after Ken’s chip teetered on the brink of the hole but didn’t fall while Gordon calmed his butterflies and sank the putt.

Laurie had reason to curse the golf gods after a drive on the third finished close by one tree with only a narrow gap between that and a second.  A nicely executed chip navigated the gap only to finish right at the base of another with absolutely nowhere to go from this one.  Brendon was playing in front of MalA again today and had a touch of the nervous nellies when Mal’s shot into the 14th finished uncomfortably close to his buggy.  Fortunately, no damage was done.  And any way, lightning never strikes twice – does it?

Brendon was also hitting the ball out of sight for most of the day.  This was particularly the case on the 17th where he was noticed searching diligently in grass that was as high as an elephant’s eye.  Alas, to no avail and even if he had found it it is doubtful whether it would have been playable.   While on the subject of searching for balls, Bill says he wants a new set of playing partners because the ones he had today didn’t search long enough.  He reckons it was more like five seconds than five minutes.

Results for Saturday, 15 February 2014
1st Targe Mifsud(+3) 2nd Kazim Akdag(+2) 2nd Ed Kloprogge(+2) 2nd Brendon Mitchell(+2) 3rd Mehmet Akdag(+1) 3rd Keith Delzoppo(+1) 3rd Rod Grant(+1) 3rd Craig Sharp(+1) 4th Malcolm Adey(□) 4th Bill Eastoe(□) 4th Oliver Gross(□) 5th Malcolm Fleming(-1) 5th Gordon Hill(-1) 5th Laurie Mannix(-1) 5th Chris Priems(-1)

It must have been the heat addling peoples brains.  Three marked their card off the incorrect handicap, a couple more couldn’t add up their points straight and Targe tried to put scores down for ten holes on the back nine.  One way to increase your points tally even if a little unconventional.

Despite all that and despite the fact that he was one of the miscreants, today’s winner by a good margin with 41 points was none other than Brendon whose Achilles seems to have snapped right back into place so there should be no holding him now though he does have a new handicap to play with so he will need to check it twice next week just to be sure.

Next was the man who isn’t sure whether it is better to be long and soft or short and hard or even the other way around.   Though Noodles was a little way behind Brendon, he was well in front of next place with 38 points and he will also suffer a little at the handicappers hands.

Blighty is back from swanning around the Continent and wasted no time in getting himself onto the podium alongside Chrispy with 35 of the best, a couple in front of the Beast and Targe both of whom left a couple of scratchies on otherwise good cards.

Mehmet, Mostyn Eddie and Gordon managed to stick together to gather the last of the points on offer today.  Given that there were only 14 starters, that didn’t leave too many out of the points – no names, no packdrill.

The Nearest the Pin for a ball on the 12th went to Chrispy who wasn’t too far from the elusive HIO according to all reports.  Interestingly, he only plodded a par for the hole so his legendary putting skills must have abandoned him temporarily.  Speaking of birdies, the count for the day was 11 which is a fair swag given the number of players.  Bill didn’t manage any today though he did try hard to get an eagle on the 17th after his screamer off the tee was variously called as ‘the middle of the green’ or ‘maybe OOB over the back’.  The reality was between the two – on the green back edge.

Guess who was in charge of putting out the ProPin marker on the 15th and ‘forgot’ so opted to put it on the 18th where it just so happened that his ball was in play and he ended up collecting the money.  Just a clue, his name starts with MalF.

There were two Matchplay matches contested today.  Noodles got up over Mostyn 4 and 3 and, after being 7 down and dormie at one stage, Harry lost to Targe also 4 and 3.

It’s a good thing Chrispy is ambidextrous after getting himself into an awkward little spot on the 8th.  It would have been a tough spot even for a left-hander but not for Chris.  Not sure whether he used the face or the back of the club but, which-ever, it was a rescue that rescued him though he did have to settle for a bogey.

Despite the passage of time, Brendon is still whingeing about the broken control knob on his buggy though it doesn’t seem to have affected his game if today’s result is any guide.  Of course, if he had bought some proper Aussie gear he wouldn’t have had to send off to Pommie-land for spare parts and it would probably have been fixed by now.

Mostyn has booked into a flash hotel for a dirty (cool) weekend, ostensibly to escape the heat.  Mehm was suggesting livening proceedings by sending in a dwarf stripper.  Luckily, Targe wasn’t around when his name was mentioned as a contender for the role.

The experiment for getting a system of on-line registration last week seems to have caused a bit of confusion and maybe it could have been explained a bit better.  One of the problems of filling out the sheet after the game is knowing/remembering the intentions of those that are not present.  So, the idea is to get people to register on-line so that the numbers of players can be confirmed more accurately.

After some feed-back, a new form has been prepared and is available under the Registration Tab on the Menu bar at the top of the page.  If you click on that, you will be taken to a page where you can fill out your name and indicate Yes/No for playing next week.  The form will be open until Wednesday.  If everybody does it whether you are playing or not we should be able to confirm our bookings more accurately and keep the Course management on side.  They do look after us, particularly in that we do not have to pay in advance and so forth and we would hate to lose that privilege.

Results for Saturday, 08 February 2014
1st Brendon Mitchell(41) 2nd Stephen Butterfield(38) 3rd Andrew Blight(35) 3rd Chris Priems(35) 4th Bill Eastoe(33) 4th Targe Mifsud(33) 5th Mehmet Akdag(32) 5th Mostyn Gregg(32) 5th Gordon Hill(32) 5th Ed Kloprogge(32)

OK, maybe there wasn’t that much water on the course today but it was certainly hot enough to require regular drinks to keep the hydration levels up.  Trevor retired after the 13th and although he has been suffering from a virus recently it is also possible that it could have been a bit of dehydration as well.  Thankfully, Trevor seems to be OK but it is worth keeping in mind that you should keep your fluid intake up on these warmer days during the round.  Given that there is no drinking water on the course, that means that you have to make sure that you carry your own and refill if necessary when you pass the Club House.

Anyway, if Chris was at all dehydrated, it didn’t affect his stroke making and he only seems to have gotten better as the day progressed with his back nine coming in ten strokes less than his front.  On top of all this was a confession by Chris that on one hole he had taken four putts from 600mm and he reckons that he wasn’t doing the Eddie two-step.  Just imagine what his nett would have been without that blot on the card.  This blistering back-nine was more than enough to get him the medal on a count-back from Mostyn who also carded a nett 64.  Both get the points and the handicap penalty but only Chris gets the medal.  Not sure how it started, but there was a rumour about that Mostyn didn’t qualify for the medal but a check of the records showed that this was not, in fact, true.  So it is a good thing that the count-back supported the announced result.  Regardless, two excellent rounds of golf that left the rest of the field in their wake.

Four strokes further back and obviously preparing himself for his trip to Yarrawonga was SOS who is hoping that the application of the slope system to his handicap will stand him in good stead for his drinking (I mean golfing) trip.  Only a stroke further back was the Beast, who continues to rack up the birdies, though he will start to run out of holes to do it on if he keeps this up.  In the process, he is also accumulating a nice little store of points and not affecting his handicap too seriously, if at all.  Way to go, Bill!  While on the subject of birdies the tally for today was nine.

Mehmet and Stephen noodled their way into fourth place and MalA was the last of the points scorers for this round.  Mal absolutely destroyed the first nine and the first three holes of the back.  Not sure what happened, but the last six were what you might call less than stellar.  Perhaps the prospect of gold glittering in the trophy cabinet got the better of him.

The ProPin on the 12th was a shoot out between Harry and Mostyn with Mostyn picking up the handy little stash of cash that helped to defray a fair proportion of the cost of his new Club shirt.  On the other hand SOS was the one to put his hand up for the ball going for the Nearest the Pin on the 12th.  Chrispy has promised to get us some new marker pens for the NTP flags.

Quite a number of players were out in their new shirts today and it does give a certain cachet to the group to be sporting common colours.  Noodles is obviously attached to some of his old Club clobber as he was seen wearing both the shirt and  a vest and this at a time when most were thinking they would like to be stripping something off.

Craig (aka Big Daddy) was very proudly showing off photos of his new pride and joy – the baby – not his golf clubs.  He’s obviously off on Cloud Nine as when he stood up to leave after the game, he turned around and walked straight into one of the Club House verandah posts.  Mal F was so spooked by the placement of the tee markers on the 14th that he kissed his ball and said ‘Goodbye’ before teeing it up.  Seems to have worked as the ball finished dead centre well down the fairway.

The draw for the matchplay was carried out after the round today and the result has been posted on the web-site.  Just follow the link in the right hand panel.  The first round has to be complete before March 15 when the second round starts so there is little time to waste.  If you have been drawn and can’t play to that deadline please advise your opponent and Harry.  If your name doesn’t appear and you would like to be a participant let Harry know and you can be on the Emergency Bench for the first round.

For those of you who would like to settle your Club and GolfLink subs by electronic transfer, the Account name is Ivanhoe Golf Club, BSB 033053, Account No 429020.  Please put your name to appear in the recipients account and send an e-mail (from your net-bank or separately) to Brendon so that he can check for the payment and issue a receipt.

Results for Saturday, 01 February 2014
1st Mostyn Gregg(64) 1st Chris Priems(64) 2nd Stephen O’Sullivan(68) 3rd Bill Eastoe(69) 4th Mehmet Akdag(70) 4th Stephen Butterfield(70) 5th Malcolm Adey(71)

What happened out there today?  OK, there was a hint of a chill in the air and there had been a hint of a sprinkling of rain, the wind was mostly benign with only a few gusts here and there, so what happened to the scoring?  Although the field was reasonably small, presumably because everybody had headed off to Canberra to collect their Australia Day gongs, or something similar anyway, we could only manage four birdies between the lot of us.  The event scores struggled as well with the only players suffering cuts being the joint winners, Keith  and Pepsi who both fronted the judges with an exactly square card.  Keith was looking pretty pleased about his first win since his come-back to the Club and he was keeping a firm grip on his winnings and his brand new Club Shirt which will be quite a change from the vintage one that he was wearing.

Bill and Noodles were the next two to front the judges just a point behind the winners and both left the odd point out there.  Noodles is considering changing to yellow balls as about the only time he scored was when he was in the driving seat of the yellow peril.

Then came a veritable herd of players another stroke behind on -2.  This elite group included Brendon, Targe, Mehmet, Eddie and Oliver.  Oliver only made it into this group due to a small error in working out one of his  hole scores.  He was in a hurry to get away, but it does pay to check the hole by hole scores before you sign the card.   This left Chrispy on his ownsome in fourth place although he did go on record as being a bit embarrassed to be getting points with that sort of a score.  How then must MalF, MalA and RodG feel getting points with even fewer.  And what about Harry and Laurie who were the only two that didn’t get points.

The other event for the day was the first of the Orange Ball Teams which ended up being a bit Irish as it was played with yellow balls.  Oh well, can’t have everything.  It is a bit unclear what caused the most confusion, how to play the coloured ball event or how the new GA handicap system was supposed to work.  In the end, most seem to have got the hang of the event and the field was evenly divided on whether to score the event with both Par and Stableford points.  One possible cause of confusion on the scoring front.  Next week in the stroke event, you will definitely have to record Stableford scores on your card but you still have to play the hole right out for the purposes of the competition result.

Anyhow, despite all that, only two teams produced viable cards, the others either losing or OOBing balls both of which are equivalent and result in a NCR result.  Between the two teams that did survive the distance, the winning score of -2 was carded by Team Eddie, ably assisted by Mehm, Oliver and Keith.  One stroke behind, and good players out of luck, were  Harry, Peps, MalA and Noodles.  Noodles was wondering whether we could allocate points to the winning team members in a sort of Coloured Ball Championship.  Hmmmm!  have to think about that one and Brendon is having enough apoplectic fits about the finances as it is.

The Ball Nearest the Pin was on the 12th (and a thumbs down to the last group for not picking up either marker) where Harry eased Brendon out of the contest and this after Brendon made rude signs as he held up the following group while he put the marker on his spot.  The ProPin on the 4th was collected by a yellow ball struck ever so delicately by Targe who even seemed a little surprised that he had won it.

First of all, there are some congratulations to Craig and his lovely wife who are now the proud owners of a bouncing baby girl named Dakota Rose.  It has been suggested that Snags went through more pain than the mother but he seems to have settled into the fatherly role with ease and is goo-ing and gaa-ing like a seasoned performer.  Well done the Sharps.

MalA was hitting the ball right on the button today.  In particular, the button on Brendon’s electric buggy that was parked, with Brendon fairly adjacent so could have been worse, near the 14th green.  The knob was broken and the shaft was bent so that no power could be applied and Brendon had to push for the rest of the round.  It was lucky it wasn’t earlier in the round or the pain might have been even greater.

Pepsi kept making the point that he hadn’t picked up a club for four weeks and as a result he was a bit rusty.  After a tee shot on the 13th that ‘should’ have been OOB and a second that ‘should’ have been in the lateral hazard, he still managed to par the hole.  Laurie was another who made a valiant effort on the 16th when he was in the drivers seat for the Orange ball and managed to bring in a plus for the side only to be disappointed that it was to no avail as the ball had been OOB on the 14th and no longer in the competition.

Mehm and Ed had some sort of a discussion about whether to play a shot over trees and Ed’s advice was that Mehm should.  As Mehm was taking his swing to attempt the shot (and could this be construed as taking advice?)  Ed made the throw away comment that he would not try that sort of a shot.  Keith’s reputation has apparently gotten around the ibis population on the course.   Walking past a foraging ibis on the course, Chris made the comment that it should watch out as Keith was in the group behind with which the ibis looked startled and flew off never to be seen again.  Maybe Keith can get rid of the fruit bats at Yarra Bend as well.  Editor’s Note: no birds were injured in producing the ibis photographs in last weeks blog.

Don’t forget, subs are due.  The new Club shirts are available.  The matchplay draw will be made next week.  It will be an all in affair.  If you can’t play or can’t play within the deadline, it will be a walk-over for whoever draws you.  There will be no extensions of time and no correspondence will be entered into.