2018: Indiv. Stableford and Putting Comp. (28.2.)

PUTTING FIRST THINGS FIRST

The best of today's bunch - congratulations!

A mild, and encouragingly windless morning at Bonalba. Greta's latest examination paper to be answered, and we had to do so writing on both sides of the paper - scores on one side and number of putts on the other. We were told that we could win prizes in either the best Stableford scoring category or in the putting contest, but not in both. An interesting way of distributing the wines on offer, and in some measure a necessary one, because if you're good at putting your Stableford score often reflects it. The old favourites of nearest-the-pins, birdie 2s and a raffle were also up for grabs. Not to mention an extra sponsored gift of 'encouragement' from Pascale and Jean-Paul - the first of six which they will give throughout the year - thank you very much to them. Bill Williams was today's proud recipient.

If my group was anything to go by - and I hear that it was!- the first few holes had golfers worried that they had left their calculators behind. 'Oops, I nearly forgot to putt out although I couldn't score'; 'Was my first putt from off the green, so it didn't count?'  Were some of us really skilful enough to chip short of the green deliberately and then cosy up to the flag? The captain did remark at the presentation that she had rarely seen so many smiling faces from golfers who had just missed the green. My group, whose average age would certainly not be a winning score on medal day, stopped every few holes to check we agreed on how many strokes and putts we'd had. All good fun.

37 members and 2 guests took part in the challenge, and the results are shown below. Overall the scoring was very commendable - just under a third of the participants scored 33 or more. Almost all total putts were somewhere in the 30s. Those who won the putting prizes should be immensely proud of their impressively low scores.

We look forward to the next of Greta's intriguing and interesting days-out.

Results

Nearest the pins
Hole 4:  Michael Davison
Hole 8:  (the newly-returned) Tony Dewavrin
Hole 11: Maureen Fanti
Hole 14: Gordon Burton

Birdie 2s
Rob Ritchie (again, welcome back) on holes 14 and 4 (haven't lost it, then?)
Mo Farouki on hole 8
Ricky Nelson on hole 8

Putting Contest
3rd place: 31 putts    Brian Wakely
2nd place: 28 putts   Brian Hines
1st place: 27 putts     Stan Tarabula

Stableford placings
3rd : Peter van der Mee with 37 points off hcp. 22 (best back 9)
2nd: Gordon Burton with 39 points off hcp. 29
1st:  Mike Turner with 39 points off hcp. 16 (better back 9, damn it. 😀)