CAPTAIN'S BLOG - NEWS

Club Championships Draw
The second round of the club championship qualifying was played on Saturday. The lowest gross scores over two rounds was selected to be in the draw. Three players, Keith Markwell, David Boyd and John Cummins elected to compete in A Grade.  The draw from the qualifiers is done following the R&A recommendations. Where there are 8 Qualifiers - upper half - 1 v 8 & 4 v 5 - lower half - 2 v 7 & 3 v 6. The rounds must be played by the dates contained in the conditions of competition. To avoid the chance of disqualification please play your match as soon as you can. Condition 10 from the Conditions of Competition states:- 

We completed the first round of the Championship qualifying in conjunction with the October Monthly Medal on Saturday. There were some fantastic scores in, including 4 x 64 netts in B grade. They were  Ken Dobie, Norm Dodds, John Cummins and Ashley Southon.  The second round is next Saturday and the qualifiers for each grade will be determined from their gross aggregate scores in both rounds. Unlike our Monthly Medal A grade goes from 0-12, B- 13 to 19 and C 20 and above. The eight lowest qualifiers will be drawn to compete in a knockout. The grade that they are drawn in, depends on their handicap when they play next Saturday. If a player qualifies for more than one grade, e.g. if a B graders nett aggregate score was better than the first eight A graders, then he can elect to play in A grade (and A grade alone) provided he tells the Captain prior to the presentation next Saturday. 


Conditions on the course are marvellous. Speaking to guest golfers, they were all full of praise for the team we have maintaining the course. Damian and Matt are our two green keepers on staff and we have the assistance of Nathan for two days a week. I think everyone agrees, what a fabulous job they do. As mentioned in a previous blog, we have refurbished our backup surrounds and fairway mowers so that they are in the same condition as our front line machines. This allows the fairways and surrounds to be prepared quicker than has been the case in the past. As a consequence of this, however, the backup surrounds mower which was previously used to do the first cut, i.e. the first cut of rough, now is no longer available to do this. A trial has been done using one of the zero turns to do this job but the result of this trial was not satisfactory – scalping and not doing a clean cut were two of the observations. The overall observation about using a zero turn for the first cut was that the result was “horrible”. This observation was from our course supervisor Damian and I would support every call that Damian makes about the standard of the golf course. So this leaves us with a bit of a conundrum – the better preparation of the fairways and surrounds comes at a cost, if we maintain the status quo of no first cut. Alternatives are to try and purchase a high hours machine that can be used for the first cut or to accept a lesser standard on our fairways and use one of the backup mowers for the first cut. One has a dollar disadvantage and the other a presentation disadvantage. Here I have tried to put the pluses and minuses of the first cut objectively and I know that some members prefer the first cut but being cognisant of all of the issues surrounding it, it may deserve a second “think”. In any case all members want the best for the club and we will be discussing this subject at the Match & Greens this coming Tuesday.