On a cold but dry winter’s day it seems as though the Princes’ course was no push-over, perhaps due to the heavy overnight rain.

The best score (34 points) was posted by Juho Lim, who played the back 9 well. The runner up was Peppe on 32 points, just one ahead of Uli. In terms of gross scores, there was very little in it between John Curry, Mike Horsthuis and Uli.

Sweep payout to Juho (£8) and Peppe (£4).

Winter Golf at its best/worst (pick your poison) at the park today. Or as I would’ve said in my previous role as banker: when we play winter golf it is like low correlation between financial assets. Summer golf on the other hand is as if correlation between financial assets were high.

Overall winner (and subsequently winner of the Junior Division) is the Men’s Secretary. 22pts on the back 9 more than made up for a sub-par front 9. Early starter Angus is keeping up his good form. He started his round with a birdie. He kept up some sort of similarity by repeating that feat on the 18th hole. Brett matched Angus’ score but his back 9 was just a bit softer. So the countback rule puts another early starter in 3rd place. Both players are the best of the Senior Division. Mike Jones – yet another early starter – takes 4th place. So may be playing in cold(er) weather does offer a certain advantage.

Weather forecast calls for a few dry days. This would give the course(s) an opportunity to dry up.

A very chilly day with a biting wind for wind chill and passing showers/drizzle. All depicted in busy graph plot at bottom of men’s results. Mud accumulated esp. towards end of round and metal spikes on shoes would have been the practical choice to avoid slithering. PCC was 1 – more difficult than normal.

Women

After yesterday’s AGM, Sheena had her drive-in as the women’s captain for 2022. Usual rules were followed with the women putting their X on a photo of the hole to guess where it would end up. It was a close run thing, but the decision was given to Avi from Katherina, who were presented with some Lindt chocs as we gathered for mulled wine & mince pies after the games.

It was the first team event of winter and conditions underfoot reminded us why we’d done away with medals at this time of year. The two 3-ball teams both finished on net 72s but the new captain’s team of Sheena, Ali & Hilary took the honours with the best back 9. Numbers were down because of those waiting on PCR results after the rules changed during the week.

Men

Sam Way shot an extremely tidy round of 66 from Rojer Rojas with Ross Hood 70 and Jay and Peter H 71s.

Sam duly won the Senior Division medal and Secretary Peter the Junior – see report.

A significantly reduced field braved the muddy (?) Dukes course in mild, overcast conditions – one can only imagine what it will be like this weekend after the promised rain tonight.

Julian continued his recent good form to win with 42 points (19 out and 23 points in), with late entry Uli taking 2nd place with 37 points (20 out and 17 in) and comfortably the lowest gross score. Ann beat the remainder of the men with a steady 30 points.

Julian wins £5 with Uli getting £1 to cover his entry fee.

Going out early seemed like the way to go. 5 players in the Top 6 went out before 8am.

Rob Dykes followed a solid front 9 (44 gross) with an excellent back 9 (38 gross). With a playing handicap of 22 his final score results in a nett score of … 60. 2nd place goes to Allan. He managed to birdie 2 par 3’s. But the rest of his round was a bit more volatile than Rob’s (a snowman and a 7 didn’t help). A group of players with a nett score 64 comes next. 3rd and 4th place go to early birds Mike and Joe: the first had a solid round but got held back by a few ugly 7’s. The 16th hole was Joe’s undoing. A 5 prevented him from improving on 4th place. 5th place goes to the only “late starter”: Peter G. He had a good day at the office except for 2 double bogeys. Seymour – you guessed it: he went out before 9AM – completes the Top6.

Below are attached PDF reports of the results, Scoring Analysis and Best Scores.

Overnight frost ( air temp 0.0C on main results page) started a very cold day but the sun shone early and winds abated.

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Colm uncorked anther great round to win with 41 points, 2 clear from a sparkling round from Gunnar – a relatively mild day for the Swede. Peter Needham a creditable 38 with 1 of just 5 ‘TWOs’

A bubbly 35 from Gina won the women’s prize [separate additional report] from Captain Val 34.

Whilst the author did not play, 8th turned out to be easiest hole overall per attached Competition Scoring Analysis Report maybe shortened hole? Ed – yes to a par 3.

Well done to all those who played today in cold, damp and increasingly windy conditions – ‘winter golf’ is truly here, although some scores were remarkably good.

Andrew Brown took the honours today with a sparkling back 9 (25 points) giving him a total of 42 points. In second place with 40 points was a resurgent James Deissler 19 out and 21 back, no doubt disappointed by his double bogey 6 on the 18th. In 3rd place was Ted with a commendable 39 points, 19 points out and 20 back. The limited sweep monies go to Andrew and James, with £1 to Ted to cover his entrance fee.

To put it mildly: there was little roll on the fairways today. If you want any proof have a look at the Scoring Analysis of today’s comp: even though a par 4 for the men the average score on the 17th was 6.14. Making it the 3rd most difficult hole of the day.  Further proof: even though the 15th played 70yds shorter for the men it still ended up as SI 11 today.

How do you post a good score then? By mastering the greens: Angus had another good round in a brief period of time. His own unofficial stats measurements indicate that he 1-putted no less than … 10 greens. No wonder you post a score of 39pts. Richard H posted the best score on the first 9 holes (23pts). Reality sunk in a bit on the back 9. His 16pts on the way in mean he only reaches 2nd place today. Jim Deissler used a Brady-esque comeback on the last 9 holes (22pts) to finish 3rd. Julian played a consistent round of golf (17+19pts) to claim 4th. Jeremy and JM Gomez also score 36pts to complete the Top6. Kevin and Peter matched those scores. But especially Kevin will have regrets over his 17th hole. The countback rule sets them back just outside of the Top6.

Please find below a PDF report of the results, Competition Scoring Analysis and Best Score Analysis.

Winter comps well underway now, with the first round now played on both courses. First real cold morning of the season- sunshine morphing into cloud and increasingly windy; passage of cold front showing in main men’s results with min 5C at 08:30 .

Women

Well what can I say! Pre-WHS this would have been a reduction only round since no one managed to reach the heady heights of 30 points, let alone 36. Nowadays of course it just means that it is highly unlikely that this will count as one of your best 8 rounds in WHS.
Seems the combination of the first really cold day, the leaves all over the place and heavy underfoot conditions caught us all out. So today’s winner was Monique with 28 points.
It was also the first round of the Eclectic, but if you look on the report for it, only 2 have a score as everyone else picked up once they’d run out of shots (or enthusiasm for the hole), so all that can be said for this is that there is room for improvement from everyone!!

Men

Play was off yellows and it was muddy despite no recent rain; some might have expected better scores but PCC was unchanged at zero. Maybe WHS handicaps settling down with less very recent joiners in early volatile WHS handicap timeframe.

Anyway, Tim Ash Vie emerged from the pack to win on 39 points with 3 followin 37 – Barry, Roger and Russell.

This was round 2 of the Winter Competition and fresh from holiday golf, Secretary Peter H took advantage to share lead with Julian and Roger 73; Russell just behind 72.

In the associated first Duke’s Eclectic round, Russell has the advantage 76.5 from Mark B 76.6.