Sheena Harrington
Sheena Harrington
August Monthly Medal
A combination of the middle of summer holidays and matches both Saturday and today kept numbers low as the rock hard conditions continue
Mitcham Friendly – 2nd leg
Another hot day on the parched fairways of the Park for the home leg of this match. A combination of the excessive run on the ball and the Open bringing out the occasional golfer all lead to some very slow rounds.
Some very tight matches today but with a lead from the 1st leg our team capitalised on it further to win 2.5 to .5 today to win the Rich-Mitch trophy again.
Thanks to the team of Ronnie, Silvia, Fiona, Jayne, Joan and Sheena with special thanks to Joan for stepping in at the last minute after an injury withdrawal and to Fiona for making the long journey from her new home in Kent to play with us.
Club Championships – Rd1 (Prince’s)
First of the 2 rounds of the Club Championship for the men and women and another hot day on the barren fairways of the Park cooled by a wind that could be somewhat blustery at times.
Women
Silvia had a great front 9 usually the harder of the 2 9s on Prince’s, dropping only 2 shots her double bogey being compensated for by the 2 birdies. She is 2 shots clear of Ronnie in 2nd spot who has timed her return to form with perfection.
With a nett 65 Ronnie also leads in the Handicap Cup on a pretty healthy cushion of 4 shots going into the second round.
In the junior division for the Pembroke Cup, things are a little closer with Katharina leading the way on a 72, 2 shots ahead of Jenny.
Men
In the CC1 scratch, Richard Back (37 out 37 in) emerged the leader 74 in the Senior division- well done! Brian McMahon and Chis Saloway followed with 75s; these followed Roger Rojas and Henry L-B 76s Roger had 5 birdies and this also propelled him to the top of[detailed] men’s Sunday birdies below.
The Junior division is headed by Tony Koczak 85 from Phil Flanagan and Dave Chilvers 86s and no fewer than 4 88 so tight for round 2.
Best front 9:Paul Kammerling 36 , best back 9 Brian.
In the handicap trophy , Pat leads with his amazing 62 pursued by Tony K and Kevin Prendergast 63s.
NAPGC Women’s Championship of England
This was played on 23rd July at Sherfield Oaks. Richmond Park ended up with just one representative, but we didn’t need any more! Caroline won the Bronze Division with a net 66.
Mitcham Friendly – 1st leg
With both teams struggling for players, it was down to 3 pairs from each club to play the 1st leg of the 2022 friendly which was at Mitcham on day warm enough for tee shirts and shorts as shown below and Richmond coming away with a 2-1 lead,
We had a good high/low combination in all three pairs, but for Sheena & Fiona who were playing the Mitcham captain, Emma and Sarah it was not enough. 3-0 down after 3 holes they held on to the 17th but a net par for Emma sealed their win. Jayne and Ann meanwhile had a romping 8-7 win to enjoy the remainder of the holes with no pressure. Our final pairing of Veronica and Deborah also won fairly comfortably 5 and 3.
As ever it was a very enjoyable day out and good to see some familiar faces from previous encounters. The return leg at the Park is on 30th July.
Women’s Invite
Traditionally where the women invite one of the chaps to play with in an American Greensomes event – in reality many sign up individually and are then paired off!
Scoring seemed especially high, finishing with two pairs on 49 points. The winners getting 26 on the back 9 to seal their victory.
Susan and Nigel were the pair to take it from the women’s and midweek captain’s pairing of Sheena & Henry who only managed 25 on the back 9. Having been out in the first game they sat at the top of the leaderboard until almost the end and were quietly confident (to no avail). 2 points behind and probably fairly confident of a win as they got back to the clubhouse were Cheryl and Roger.
6 pairs recorded scores of 46 or better so definitely a good scoring day. The 2021 event was won with a mere 45 points.
As pizza and chips along with a drink on the club were consumed, prizes were awarded to the top 3 places and the women’s captain thanked everyone for participating in this fun event (especially when she came 2nd)
May Monthly Medal
Today was a throwback to those days when waiting on every tee for every shot was commonplace on a Sunday – it evidently started from first thing as there were messages from those out before the clubs who could see what was happening (or not) ahead. But it was just such a lovely day weatherwise to be out there so long unlike Wednesday when we got soaked.
Women
Another case of beware the injured golfer. As author, your captain could give you a blow by blow account of the round – but it wasn’t very exciting. What was more surprising was that all 3 in the game (Cheryl, Katharina and Sheena) seemed to be pretty much level pegging on hole by hole scores. Cheryl says it ws down to lucky bounces which obviously made the difference and that was before she knew she’d been beaten by 1 shot into second place…. as we have a Whitewebbs match next weekend hopefully we can keep it going. (Footnote: sadly we didn’t!
Men
Nuisance rain on Sunday morphed into annoying rain for later participants But there was good golf throughout.
Ian Humphreys shot an amazing 56 on Saturday with just 2 over par through 9th; it was back to normal in a GPS round on Duke’s for Ian on Sunday. But Ian earned an ESR -1 adjustment going back to his earliest (16th) WHS round.. Nigel Ward had a super 60 for second and there were 61s from Goran, Brian (& best gross), Joe , Paul Green and Justin. Overall PCC remained at zero.
Congrats for 3 Eagles -Henry L-B 9th, James P 12th and Kevin P 17th.
This translates to divisional results:
Senior – Brian 1st Joe 2nd
Junior – Ian 1st Nigel 2nd
Also 3rd round of Grand Medal Trophy – Colm lead 193 but menacingly close behind on 200 is Paul Grand with Robin 204 and Peter H 205.
Spring Mixed 4BBB
The first Saturday event of the year saw just 9 pairs playing. This is a mixed random draw event, so you don’t find out who your partner is until just before the event – & hope that you’ve drawn a good’un
It was good to see all the games coming in so swiftly one after the other with no large gaps anywhere – must have been a consequence of all that good play out there.
As this is a comp with awards at the annual dinner all the cards and technically should have resulted in a DQ for two pairs – thus raising the finishing place of those of us lower down the order. However as both have finished just outside the prizes I have left them but can’t check their scores.
Needless to say, the winners with an outrageous 49 points are HIlary & Colm (who were probably disappointed on the 5 holes where they scored less than 3 points) and 5 points back on a very good score of 44 was Joan & John who as first out sat there at the top of the leaderboard for most of the day.
Bacon rolls with tea/coffee before play were the order of the day, followed by a drink afterwards as we gathered for the first social event.
‘Women’s’ Weekend Away
As with everything else, this hasn’t happened since Covid so it was a welcome return to the usual calendar or events. A smallish group of both golfers and non-golfers made their way to the Essex Golf & Country Club. It is fair to say that everyone was both delighted with the lack of traffic en route and the course which was very long (over 6,000 yards even off the red tees) but also very flat with lovely grassy fairways.
With such a long course, scores were generally on the low side, but experience helped and the highest scores made by both the men’s and women’s overall winners were on the Sunday. Interestingly there were more men than women which must be a first at this event and their results were very tight with Suhail taking 1st spot with his 39 points on the Sunday from Colm, both scored 68 in total. The women were of course playing for the Lockie Trophy with Joan taking it home with her after her 37 points on the Sunday to beat Sheena by `1 overall with 67 in total.
There were the usual prizes for the Saturday and Sunday competitions in addition to the overall with no one eligible for more than one win along with the team awards.
This was a first for Julie Ryan on both the attendance and organisation of one of the weekends. She probably thought she could relax once she’d arrived, only to hear from 3 separate groups on arrival issues necessitating some quick games re-arrangements! All was duly sorted and a good time was had by everyone with thanks to Julie for all her hard work.
Women’s Scramble & Men’s Monthly Medal (GMT Rd1 of 8)
For the men, winter is over with the first event of the main competition season but the women, remembering previous March conditions played a team event. Indeed the weather may have been dry but out of the sun it was cold and conditions underfoot were decidedly boggy in places
Women
Another small field which shrank overnight to just 2 teams of 3. Two of the winner’s team had played at Easthampstead on the Saturday and obviously relished the relative ‘dryness’ of Prince’s today. As ever with these events the results were very close with just 1 shot separating the two teams, but undoubtedly Silvia’s ability to send the ball a long way will have helped them to reach many of the holes in regulation – not withstanding the tee shot she will want to forget on the 13th!! But the 2 birdies they scored also helped.
Men
A plucky back 9 from the Handicap Secretary led to a winning 63 from George Taylor and Dave Chilvers 64s. Robin Thomas had a glorious 65.
Congrats to Ross Hood who claimed 4 birdies to lead the Sunday tree. There were 5 birdies (‘Twos’) at new SI 18 11th.
In the divisional results George Taylor wins the senior medal 64 from Brian Ransom 66; The undersigned wins junior 63 from Dave Chilvers.
This was the first (of 8) rounds in the appropriately named Grand Medal Trophy and results mirror the day’s results.