The quality of the golf today was excellent. And it has to be said that the pace of play was pretty decent too.

Senior Division

Naveed went out early. 3 birdies set him on course for a very tidy 71 (gross) to become leader in the clubhouse. 2 other early starters (John Perkins and Rob Smyth) came pretty close but couldn’t better Naveed’s marker. Richard Owen as per usual posted an excellent round on Prince’s. None of the late morning starters threatened Naveed’s gross score. The last remaining threat were the pm starters. And the sting was clearly in the tail. Strong of his win in the main CC RIchard Back managed to record no less than … 7 birdies. Scores of 34 (gross) on the front 9 and 32 (gross) on the back 9 give him a reasonable cushion for Round 2 next week. Jay must absolutely hate hole 10 on Prince’s now. Rather uncharacteristically he experienced the same problems as in the main CC. Despite that costly misstep he remains within touching distance of Richard B.  Silvia put in an excellent round and is first woman today (no trophy for that unfortunately).

Silvia leads women’s round 1 scratch 76 from Sheena 83′

Junior Division

Roland ended front and back 9 with birdies to take a 1-shot lead into next week. Colin made a good birdie on the 6th to fully remain in the hunt. Chris Jones and Pat Dalton are a further shot back. Not surprisingly the field is much tighter in the Junior Division.

Nett Results/Handicap Trophy

Results are a bit different re: the MW Handicap Trophy. Hilary is keeping up her recent good form by posting an incredible score of 58 (Nett). Richard B is a close second with his score of 60 (Nett). John Perkins and Naveed are a bit further back on Nett 63’s.

Conditions were cooler than of late with sunny intervals extending to sunny periods. After rain a week or so ago random bounce was not quite so pronounced and still plenty of run.

The deserved winner of the President’s Putter with an immaculate 45 points was Susan Smith and she also earned an ESR with HI dropping from 17.8 ->15.7. Ryan Jones led the challeng with and excellent 42 pts with Silvia and Charlie Whiteman 40s Charlie’s 40 included 2 ‘blobs’. Brian McMahon had best back 9 – 23 points.

There were novelty NTP par 3 prizes as below
NTP 2nd Louis Dickey
NTP 4th Tim Rose
NTP 11th Paul Kamerling
NTP 13 in 2 Richard Inglis
NTP 16th Roger Rojas

The competition was the 6th of 7 for the men’s Top Dog:
Senior division is headed by Richard Smith 24 pts from Ryan and Richard Owen 18s
Junior division is a 3-way tie on 24 points for Duncan, Goran and Charlie Whiteman.

It was a very pleasant, mainly sunny summer’s day with a slight south-westerly breeze and it was good to see a tinge of green on the fairways after the torrential downpours earlier in the week.

Our winner Teddy Holt, with 39 points, played consistent bogey-golf for the first 13 holes, interspersed with a birdie and 3 pars (33 points over 13 holes !) but struggled slightly to finish it off with just 6 points over the final 5 holes. Anyway, good to see Teddy back in the winner’s circle.

Rannesh finished 2nd (38 points) with 8 pars and a birdie on the difficult 8th hole. He could probably have beaten Teddy if he hadn’t needed 2 shots to get out of the greenside bunker on the 18th hole.

A further point back, 3rd place went to Martin Hay, a steady round with 3 pars and just one blob.

The best scores analysis shows Pat Dalton had the best front 9 (22 points) – similar to his front 9 on Duke’s last Sunday – and he was one of 5 players to get a birdie, the others not already mentioned being Andrew Brown and Naveed.

Sweep payout to top 3 ( £12, £8 & £3)

Avoiding the forecast showers proved a bit more straight forward than expected. The apocalyptic forecast of the Met didn’t materialise. So luckily the field was spared thunderstorms. Truth be told the late morning starters experienced the heaviest downpour. But everybody made it to the clubhouse without too many problems.

A stellar performance (24pts on front and back 9) by Adrian Wells was the biggest highlight of the day. On top of some sweep money Adrian will also receive an ESR. Best of the rest was John. The MC had had a very rewarding couple of days. After a thumping in the Bontor he put up 19pts on way out and 23pts on the way in to take second. 3rd place goes to Rob. But his scores on the 6th and 18th will leave a very bad taste in his mouth. Oliver was a late starter and struggled through the downpour. But his perseverance gets rewarded with a nice 4th place finish. Toby is keeping up his good recent form and is the last of the players on 40+ points.

Anther hot day – and the author stayed away.

Conditions suited the day’s winner of the Golden Jubilee – Sheena with a net 63. She stamped her authority at beginning of both 9s with birdies at first and10th. Sheena shrugged off another -1.0 ESR (first on Captains’ Day last year with HI reduced from 14.5 to 12.3.
3 behind were Goran 66 on countback from Mike Shabani. Former captain Kim shot lowest gross 68 and last week’s winner Nick continues to impress {with Louis] on back 9 -39.

This was 3rd of 4 Jubilee rounds and the Anniversary Cup sees John Morris leading 204 from 3 on 206 -Mike Shabani, Sheena and Oz.

Divisional Top Dogs for the men show Richard Owen leading Senior on 18 from Oz and Richard Smith 16s. The Junior currently has a tie – both Duncan Taylor and Goran with 24 pts.

An excellent turnout considering the blisteringly hot conditions, where the sensible choice was to be in a buggy. Scoring was good, particularly by the women, who took 4 of the top 5 places.

Our winner, Ann Gardner (42 points), played an even better round than her best ever winning score on Wednesday and her HI (handicap index) has dropped from 32.7 to 30.4 as a result of those 2 rounds – her comment was “I couldn’t have done it without the buggy”.

Occasional Friday player Jayne Maxwell (39 points) took 2nd place with her usual very steady round, scoring on every hole, 19 points out, 20 points in, 8 pars (and no buggy !!). Brian Ransom was 3rd (38 points) “best of the men” and being the best on countback from 4 players on 38 points, the others being Sheena, Mayumi and Rannesh. Brian and Sheena both had 19 points out and 19 points back but his two late pars on the 15th and 16th clinched it. On the other hand, Mayumi and Rannesh both had great front 9s (23 and 24 points respectively) but ‘fell away’ on the back 9.

Results and Best Scores Analysis reports linked below; sweep went to top 4 (£12, £8, £4, £2)

A small field met on the scorched ground of Princes today to compete in the August Midweek Monthly Meda [August Desert Classic].

Playing early to avoid the heat proved a sound strategy for quite a few players (numbers 2-5 in the rankings today went out before 8AM). Second observation is that the women in particular seemed to deal pretty well with the conditions (suppose the extra run didn’t hurt). Maybe this explains why a lot more women signed up for the sweep than usual.  Pralab survived bogeys on the final 3 holes to take the clubhouse lead with a score of 63 (Nett – 78 Gross). Pat Barbour came in 3rd with an excellent score of 64 (Nett). Giles and Pat were 1 stroke further back with 65’s (Nett). Hilary seems to keep up her recent good form to finish alone on 66 (Nett). Gina had the best back 9 overall. But no-one was a match for the best thing to come from Canada since Bryan Adams, Wayne Gretzky, Pamela Anderson, maple syrup and poutine (the spelling is correct – it is a dish) (FYI: ranking is totally random) . Ann Gardner shot a remarkable round of 61 (Nett) to steal today’s honours. Her result could/should’ve been better had she been able to avoid an ugly 7 on the 18th hole. You probably saw Oliver copying Omar Sharif/Lawrence of Arabia by showing up all dressed in white today.

MW GMT ranking: Tamas (335), Gina (339), Peter G (344) Mayumi (350).

Another warm, sunny summer’s day with plenty of extra run on the bone hard fairways and we have a “New Winner”!

It’s not often that Graham Babington-Smith enters the competition and I can’t see any record of a previous win on his scoring record, however his intuition was good this morning (or did he enter the competition ‘by mistake’ ……… ?). Anyway, a very solid round, scoring on every hole resulted in a winning total of 41 points (20 out; 21 in).

The 3 players in 2nd, 3rd and 4th places all scored 39 points and, based on countback were Sheena, Peter Flint and Pralab.

Sheena’s round was pretty faultless, with 10 pars, except for the opening blob and the finishing double bogey. John Ahad will certainly have his work cut out tomorrow playing matchplay against Sheena in the annual men versus women competition.

It’s good to see Peter posting a good score again after a bit of a barren patch; he too could have challenged Graham B-S if he hadn’t blobbed the last hole.

Another steady round from Pralab (the best front 9 and the best overall on the par 4’s) – however blobs on the par 3 2nd and par 3 11th were his undoing.

A mention must be made of Andrew Brown’s round: a good looking 24 points after 11 holes and then only one more point on the remaining 7 holes – looks like a nightmare.

And finally, after his round Richard Norden (see picture attached) declared “I just don’t seem to be able to play golf anymore” – I’m sure his next win is just around the corner.

Sweep payout to top 4 : £9, £6, £4, £3