Match Report 2015 Bentham Golf Club
A small, but select, band of ten players turned up at Bentham for the eighth Parrot's outing of 2015. An indication of the society's world-wide popularity was that one of the players, Kevin Gerrard, had travelled all the way back fom Kazakhstan just to play golf with the lads. (Hope Debbie isn't reading this Kev !). Kev scored a commendable 30 points in the afternoon, but my advice to him would be to join a golf society somewhere nearer, like Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan, where the competition might not be quite so hot!
Current overall leader, unpopular handicap secretary Glenn Wellard, was away sunning himself on the Italian Riviera presenting a perfect opportunity for the rest of us to make inroads into his slender lead.
The morning 'nine' saw most players score in the mid-teens, with 3 players playing to their handicap or better. In third place, evergreen sexagenarian Jim Clayton with 18 points, but joint winners were the two Geoffries. Namely, increasingly portly former firefighter Geoffrey Moyle, and meat-mutilating, purveyor of pork Geoffrey Moss, who both returned a decent score of 19.
As we sat outside enjoying our lunch, the sun was beating down, and all looked set fair for an afternoon of golf played in glorious conditions. Already elated with his morning victory, Geoffrey Moyle was sent into delerium by your correspondents decision to use a buggy for the afternoon round. This was thanks to recent advice from Luke Palmer, who obviously thinks I am far too old to stagger round a golf course on foot !
As we stood on the first tee for the afternoon round the glorious conditions of lunch-time had evaporated, and the sky above was as black as the ace of spades. This set the scene for an afternoon of sunshine, showers, heavy rain, intermittent wind, thunder and lightning. If the course had been situated half a mile South, the whole round would have been played under calm blue skies. Such is the eco-system of the area.
Despite the changing conditions the scoring wasn't bad at all. Six of the ten players scoring 30 points or more and improving their positions in the overall standings. Second place with 35 points went to Jim Clayton. Jim has the easiest life of anyone I know, and is probably playing the best golf of his life. He would be the first to agree that this is entirely due to the competitive nature of his regular fourball at his home club, Fleetwood. Well done Jim.
However, the rest of us were just playing supporting roles for a man who seems to reserve his best golf for Bentham. This man normally lives in a fantasy world of super-imposing himself onto pictures of the world's top golf courses playing with the worlds top players, and putting photo's of random golfers on our website, but at Bentham he comes alive ! If you can imagine a humming bird feeding from a flower that will give you an idea of how he addresses the ball. He NEVER has to clean the bottom of his driver. Stand up Phil Matthews! Phil was a clear four points ahead of the field, repeating the score of 39 points he achieved two years ago at this venue. Excellent.
Phil improved his overall 'best 5' score by a massive 15 points, and I'm sure you will all be relieved to learn that we now have a new name at the top of the leaderboard. Modesty prevents me from saying who it is, but I'm sure you will all be mightily pleased when you peruse the league table on our wonderful website.
The next game is at Appleby on August 12th, and I suggest that those grouse-shooting afficionados amongst you defer your pleasure until the next day, as Appleby is a wonderful course, and little more than half an hour up the motorway. See you there ....Mike
Handicap changes since Bentham are as follows:
Paul Greenaway 23 to 24
Tony Johnson 24 to 25
Geoff Moss 16 to 15
Phil Matthews 20 to 18
