Match Report Morecambe Golf Club 2016
The final outing of the Parrots golf society for 2016 took place at the usual venue of Morecambe last Friday. Upon arrival at the course for bacon butties, the rain was hammering down! Oh dear, what happened to the ‘Some societies.......’ mantra?! But, luckily, the forecasts of frequent heavy showers largely failed to materialise, and whilst there was a brief shower during the afternoon round, most of the day was fine with moderate winds. There was the usual good attendance for the last match of the year with 15 players making the trip, with the added promise of £10 each for Nearest the Pin on each of the Par 3’s, as well as the day prizes of course.
Scoring is always difficult at Morecambe, and in the morning only one person managed to beat his handicap. So, good scores though they were, 16 points from Mike Barnes, Marky T and Phil were not quite enough to beat one of the morning specialists in the society, as TJ took the money for the morning with an excellent 19 pts. Well done Tony!
After a soup and sandwich lunch, it was time for the final round of the season. Unusually, the top two on the overall leaderboard, John Cottam and Kev Gerrard, were unavailable to play in the final round, so this meant that myself and Martin G squeezed our way into the final group out, although Mike Barnes and Marky T (just one point behind Kev in 2nd place) were best placed to affect the top of the table. As yet no-one has led going into the final round at Morecambe and not prevailed, not least due to Morecambe being a tough scoring course. However, 2nd and 3rd places have been affected a number of times.
True to form then, only 5 scores made it to 30 points or better this final day. Three of these though, did come from the final group! But first, repeating his feat from Chorley of being a long term leader in the clubhouse, the best early score in was 31 points from Pete Whiteside, romping round in the threeball with Warren and Trevor. Another long wait for Pete to see if this might be good enough for some cash!
There was nothing doing from the second group out with Paul, Phil, Stuart and Mossy all shooting buffer zone scores, although Mossy took the Par 3 prize on the 5th hole.
But let’s move to the last group next. Starting my last round as defending champion, but with seemingly too much to do to get into the prizes, I had set off like a house on fire. 14 points from the first 6 holes, including a birdie on the first. Was a shock on? Unfortunately, I could not sustain that early pace and went AWOL around the turn, recovering towards the end to post the score of 30 pts.
Perennial 4th placer, Mike Barnes, came in with just 24 pts, meaning he had gone AWOL for much more of the round than me .............. except on the back nine Par 3’s which he proceeded to win all three of! He might have mentioned it to you if you’ve seen him recently! Despite my early advantage then, Marky T took the half way lead with 16 pts to mine and Martins 15.
The second nine holes was nip and took between these two. On the 18th Tee Mark had amassed 31 points, beating his discard by the one point needed to tie Kev, and leading Martin by one. However, having fired his final tee shot so far left he was in the bushes on the other side of the 10th hole, furious calculations were being performed walking down the hole to see who would win the tie-break for 2nd place overall, as surely Mark wouldn’t score from there? But score he did! The ball was found and Mark secured a 5 for 1 and tiptoed past Kev to take clear second place in the leaderboard. Martin however managed two points on the last to amass the same 32 points as Mark, but as the Mensa members amongst you will know by now, this meant that Martin was ahead of Mark in the reckoning for the day on count back. Would this score be enough?
Well, frankly, (see what I’m doing here?!) no, because the other score in the 30’s was a magnificent 36 points by Frank Healey from the third group out, meaning Frank was the winner for the day (and also nearest the pin prize winner for the 3rd hole), with Martin taking 2nd place. Congratulations to Frank, and he never bent my ear about his handicap all day either!
All this meant that, despite his absence, John comfortably held on to first place in the overall table, so congratulations to John for an excellent debut season and he’s the Parrots Golf Society champion for 2016. It also means that Mike finished ........... yep, fourth again, for the fourth year running (fifth in total)! I think he’s secretly proud of this personal sequence record.
Taking the prize for the highest individual score of the year was Tony Johnson with his 42 pointer, winning the day at Bentham. Well done Tony.
Handicap changes from Morecambe were :-
Frank Healey 13 to 12
Mike Barnes 11 to 12
Warren Murphy 21 to 22
Tony Johnson 21 to 22
Paul Greenaway 24 to 25
For those that were interested in last year’s statistics from the season, I’ll be putting these out in a separate newsletter of that and other things like handicap rule changes which will be introduced at the start of next year, following feedback received this year.
In the meantime, thanks to everyone who took part in the Parrots Golf Society for 2016, enjoy the Winter break (only 82 shopping days left till Christmas!) and we’ll see you all again hopefully in 2017............
