The first round of the season kicks off at the Surrey National Golf Course formally known as the 'Happy Valley'! This course has at least four very difficult par 4's not to mention the 3rd par 3 which carries 150 yards over the lake. The course is always kept in good condition and is a good test for all golfers. Let’s see if any of you can reach the green in two on the 18th.
Group 1 | Peter Tweddell, Luke Moore #, Mark Parsons, Steve Purves. |
Group 2 | Peter Barrett (B), Chris Lewis, Roy Goodhew, Guest of Roy (G). |
Group 3 | Peter Gray (B), Graham Nunn, Dave Catchpole, Jeff Mills. |
Group 4 | Peter Self (B), Mark Moore, Dave Swinbank (B), Paul Damper. |
Group 5 | Steve Tothill (B) #, Stewart Ryan (B), David Taylor (B), David Smith (B). |
Group 6 | Trevor Woods (B) #, Gary Koster #, Brian Goodhew (B), Kevin Warncken #. |
Group 7 | Graham Gove #, Gary Kisby #, Simon Muir #, John Burbridge #. |
| # = non-dining, (G) = guest, (B) = Buggy |
With Captain Tim missing his last round of duties I, Vice Pete, took the reins. It proved to be a good warm up for my first official round as Captain by dealing with anomalies arising on numbers for dinner. The day started with an excellent full english breakfast, there's no better way to get prepared for a full round of 18. We were caught up behind another society but overall the speed of play wasn't too bad. Something else can be said for the play of the greens though, where you'd 'see' some turn it just wouldn't come.
Some big scores came in with a third of the field of 27 players carding mid 30's and above. One player and overall winner, Gary Koster, managed to break the 40 point mark. Gary also deserves a mention for winning the nearest the pin in three by recording an eagle! Hole 13 proved a hard green to hit with only Mark Parsons hitting it and winning the honour. When receiving the cards at the end of the day I noticed quite a few players including myself scoring better on the front 9 than the back 9. So for those of you that love stats I took pleasure in delving deeper into the numbers to find that as a society we scored 449 points on the front verses 381 on the back. Two thirds of the players backed up this stat, it must have been those tiring legs after walking up all those hills!