Seven Shots

After missing out last year, the Open starts again today from Royal St Georges. Two of our members were down in Kent last week to check out the venue first hand but more on that later.

Pro Am

Twenty three teams took part in Saturday’s Pro Am which proved to be another successful event. Apart from about an hours heavy rain in the afternoon, the weather was kind to us and the course was in immaculate condition – with true, receptive greens.

Olly Smith took advantage of this by going round in an incredible 62 strokes and using just seven of them to play all par threes! Yes you read that correctly – he had three twos and a hole in one… as you do! Olly also helped spearhead the winning team partnered by Mike Kirchin, Chris Brown and Paul Hilton. They recorded a score 119 or 21 under par which was unmatched.

David Rodwell, Howard Gill, Brian Greenbank and their pro Matthew Dixon scored 18 under to finish second. Roger Laitt, Adam Laitt, George Buchan and pro Curtis Hughes were one shot adrift in third whilst Peter Hindle, Neil Thompson, Pete Tukington and pro Jason Dransfield finished fourth with 124.

Second place in the individual professionals’ competition went to Jason Shufflebotham with a 64 and third was Philip Archer with a 65. In total 6 pros finished under par with three pros on level par – I was one of those pros on even par.

Thanks to Dan Huxley and helper Bill from the PGA, Russell and team, Ben and the bar staff for their part in producing such a memorable day. Thanks also to the members for kindly allowing the course to be used throughout the day.

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Ladies Summer Meeting

Well done to Gwynneth Bramwell, Mary Cockbain, Jean Green and Sally Budd for shooting an amazing 85 points last Thursday to win the ladies Summer Meeting. Three points adrift in second place was Jan Ravenscroft, Sue Bryant, Diana Harris and Jennifer Bradley. Ten teams took part and the beautiful weather helped the players enjoy a tasty lunch and a glass of wine (just the one of course!) after play.

R & A 9 Hole Challenge Final

This was staged at Royal St Georges last Saturday. Amanda Greaves and Jane Wilkinson qualified at our events which were held a few months ago. They were both delighted to be playing but somewhat apprehensive about playing golf on such a big stage early on in their golfing journeys. They both sent me lovely emails afterwards telling me about their experiences and so I have quoted them below (I hope you don’t mind Amanda & Jane!!) Well done ladies, you did us proud and what a story to tell!

Here’s part of the message from Amanda:

We got the results through last night and we finished 8^th out of 17 – so we are delighted.  We just didn’t want to score 0.  The winners scored 38 and we scored 32 – which I think is very respectable especially as we were terrified.

We were the highest handicaps by a long way – so they ranged from 2.5 to 46.6 (Me!).  Apart from Jane and I everyone had a handicap 28.5 or less.

You couldn’t see the end of the rough off the tee, so it was fingers crossed and a big drive to try and keep out of it – which we managed on most holes. Apart from me on the first – I was so nervous, and spectators, cameras etc!

I can’t quite believe we did it and were the only ladies team, and only 8 ladies out of 34 competitors!

As everyone told us and in hindsight, we had a great time and everyone was lovely to us, even in the rain.  Anyway thank you for your help and we will let you know if anything comes of our interview on camera about women getting into golf.  R&A are trying to push the development of the sport in terms of 9 hole golf and more women and juniors playing – so we were their ideal story.

And here’s some words from Jane:

We did not feature in the prizes but got a respectable 32 points, the winning team got 37.

Hale Golf Club did get a special mention from the Randa chairman of development that if there was a prize for best turned out team it would go to Hale!!

We were also interviewed by Randa because they were very impressed that both of us got into golf via the very generous temporary  membership initiative Hale Golf Club offered.

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Correction

In last week’s missive, I quoted the incorrect time for this Thursday’s inauguration of new club president Barry Jefferies. The correct start time is 1900. My apologies for any confusion and I hope it’s a good evening for all.

Twos on all the Par Threes

Thanks to Peter Hardern for answering my question of last week about whether anyone had ever scored four twos on the par threes here at HGC (how ironic after Olly Smith’s incredible efforts of Saturday?) by explaining that Oliver Harris had done so. He went on to explain that he was fairly certain that David (Percy) Leese and David Hallworth had also done so. Peter recalls Oliver buying drinks all round after his birdie barrage on the par threes but is not sure of when this happened though.

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