Match Report Chorley Golf Club 2016
For the 13th round of the Parrots Golf Society for 2016 it was a return trip to Chorley Golf Club which was last played in 2014. 15 players made the trip for what was forecast to be yet another excellent weather day for the Parrots Golf Society. “Some societies................”, well you know the rest!
Today was the penultimate round before the season finale at Morecambe and so represented the last opportunity for all those harbouring false hopes of a late charge to the title to put themselves in striking position. It’s also the day that the last group out for the final round is determined, so there was top four kudos to play for too.
It was also the last round to be played by tournament leader John Cottam as he will not be present at Morecambe due to his involvement in a challenge to climb Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowden that weekend. An impressive undertaking for a man of John’s years you might be thinking, how fit must he be?! Until you realise John’s involvement is as driver and support man for the guys that are actually going to climb the mountains!!
Anyhow on to the golf. A tough course Chorley, with tricky greens, how many times do we say that after Parrots days out?! So 18 points in the morning was deemed to be a very good score. A few got close, one or two got nowhere near (myself included!), but fast becoming a morning expert, Martin Greenaway scored exactly 18 points and this was not expected to be beaten by the last group in. But Martin was left as the bridesmaid once again as the aforementioned tournament leader John Cottam rolled in with an unassailable 20 pts to take the morning prize. A great score, so well done to John, was that to be the kiss of death for a good afternoon score as is so often the case?
No alfresco lunch today, due to the absence of the necessary facilities of either a balcony or a patio, but an excellent view overlooking the course from the upstairs lounge as stomachs were replenished.
The afternoon round was slow, owing to our groups following another golf society who were also, believe or not, from Thornton-Cleveleys! Rumour has it these guys were cabbies, and it seemed that some of these played golf as they drove their taxi’s, by not necessarily going from A to B in the shortest and fastest route!
Our first group out was a three-ball of Pete Whiteside, Phil, and Warren, and thanks to this prompting two groups ahead to let them through, they were round in close to an hour before the next group! This meant that Pete had a long wait to see if his good score of 31 might be good enough to take a prize.
There was no playing through for any of our other groups, it was a case of being as patient as possible, which maybe was just as well in the sweltering heat and the toils up the many steep inclines!
The second group of myself, Frank, Mossy and Mark T, had mixed rounds to say the least. If I tell you that Frank and I lost our doubles match to the other two by 13 points, you’ll immediately be able to discount two players from the days final reckoning. Perhaps in Frank’s case, he never recovered from finding out at lunchtime that his handicap had been calculated corrected and was 12 instead of 13. So, seeing his £20 with Geoff drifting further and further away towards the Winter Hill horizon, he decided to take matters into his own hands to make sure he was off 13 next time, by recording possibly the lowest score ever for a back 9 in the Parrots of 4 points! This score wasn’t helped by driving off the Par 5 13th, before the group in front had rung the bell, resulting in an anguished cry from ahead, and suspiciously no sign of a ball when we got up there!
Mossy had a creditable 29 pts, but Mark stood on the 18th tee with 33 points already in the bag. A good tee shot just short of the green of the Par 3 last, similar to Frank. Second shots were played, Mark, closest to the hole, went to mark his ball. Disaster, both Frank and Mark had played the wrong ball! Whilst not an issue for Frank at that stage, it cost Mark a probable three points. Could that cost him the day’s win and what effect on the overall championship? Only time would tell.
No improvement on Mark’s score from the next group, despite the usual hard luck story from your chain smoking secretary, whose two blobs in the last three holes, left him one short of the lead with 32 points.
So it was down to the last group of Jim, TJ, Stuart and John C.
Clearly Stuart had given himself a stern talking to at lunch. In the morning, golf had seemed as difficult to Stuart as winning football matches has been to Blackpool in recent years. But he recovered to post a creditable score of 32 in the afternoon. With a 26 pointer putting TJ out of the running, there were only two left. And these two were to take 1st and 2nd place.
Beaten into second place for the second time in four outings was Jim. However, 34 points with a handicap of 7 (gross score of 80) is excellent golf from a guy who had let his cloak of invincibility at Fleetwood slip just the day before.
But, he’s done it again, pipping Jim with 35 pts courtesy of the extra shot on the 18th was tournament leader John Cottam, recording his third win of the season, and leaving Marky T to rue his ball identification error on the 18th hole, which cost him the win. But, congratulations to John who sweeps the board at Chorley with his morning and afternoon win, and extends his overall championship lead by a single point.
Handicap changes from Chorley were as follows :-
John Cottam 18 to 17
Jim Clayton 7 to 6
Phil Matthews 18 to 19
Glenn Wellard 6 to 7
Frank Healey 12 to 13
Warren Murphy 20 to 21
The leaderboard has already been posted to the website, and shows that John has now a 6 point lead over Kev in second, 7 from Mark T (could have been 4 Mark, sorry!) and 8 from Mike Barnes. These three are the only serious contenders to John being crowned champion for 2016, and with him not being present at Morecambe, Martin Greenaway makes it into the final group with his 30pts at Chorley breaking the 4-way tie on 166 points as the best 6th score.
So, there’s just one round to go for the Parrots season for 2016, the season closer at Morcambe, Friday 30th September. For those already accepting themselves as also-rans this year, there’s still plenty to play for at Morecambe. As well as the morning and afternoon prizes, Mike has announced there will be prizes of £10 for nearest the pin on each of the five Par 3’s. And let’s not forget the presentation speech from your genial organiser Mr Barnes, who would want to miss that!! See you there.
Glenn
