Match Report Windermere Golf Club 2016
The 7th round of the Parrots Golf Society for 2016 saw the group make a 3rd visit to Windermere GC, and for the third year in a row, the weather was superb with virtually wall to wall sunshine through the day, making for magnificent views across the Lakeland fells. The tight course was again in excellent condition with its slick greens their usual difficult test of line and pace.
It was no surprise then that a bumper number of 18 competitors made the long trip to Windermere, although our tournament leader at the start of play, Kev Gerrard, did get his Lakeland bunkerless courses mixed up and went to Kendal Golf Club originally, but arrived just in time for the morning 9 holes.
The morning 9 holes saw some good scores posted with 18 points apiece scored by Mike Barnes and John Patterson. With 20 points, representing a score of just 2 over gross, Martin Greenaway must have thought the morning prize was in the bag, but he and everyone else were blown away by the 23 points scored by Bill Pye. Looking back, I see that 23 points was also the winner of the morning last year at Windermere by Mike Barnes, although it seems the society sneaked another two holes in last year as Mike’s 23 pts were over 11 holes!
So Bill was the morning winner, scoring as many points in 9 holes here as he had scored in either of his 18 hole rounds at Portal, truly mercurial golfing form! Congratulations to Bill.
After a leisurely lunch, the application of yet more sun tan lotion for those that needed it and Frank Healey readjusting the four-balls so he didn’t have to walk round with me all afternoon as well as all morning (!), it was time for the afternoon round.
It was a very close contest for most in the afternoon. 12 of the 18 players scores were within five shots of each other at the top of the days leaderboard, but there were some notable flops. Morning winner Bill Pye, only 17 pts in the afternoon; overall leader Kev Gerrard 19 pts (maybe he should have played at Kendal after all!) and 3 time winner this year Mark Thomas only 20 pts.
On 33 points though, were myself, Trevor Middleton, Phil Matthews and Geoff Moss, who was sneaking the lead from the other three by the card playoff rule after three groups had come in. The others were all rueing the odd missed putt here and there that would have put us in the lead. My only consolation is that, having blown Martin G’s trumpet with his low gross scores in the last two reports, I can blow my own in this one as my 77 gross was the lowest of the day!
But in the end it was the 4th group in that held both the eventual winner and runner up. Paul Greenaway was declared on 34 pts but pipping him by one on 35 pts was John Cottam, back on form again following a mini slump at Bentham and Portal. However, little did anyone know of the drama that was to unfold the following morning!
No, I don’t mean the referendum result, I mean the fact that there were two errors on this group’s scorecard, marked by Stuart Weston, when I checked them the next morning. It turns out that Paul Greenaway in fact had 35 pts also and so had tied with John. It was down to a card playoff. Fortunately, there was no need for hasty phone calls to a certain butchers shop to reverse the result as John’s better back 9 still gave him the win, with Paul confirmed as runner up. So congratulations to John on a second win of the season adding to his win at Heysham in Round 1.
To be fair to Stuart though, he also got his own score wrong, scoring 25 pts instead of the 24 pts he declared. Does anyone know if Stuart was involved in counting votes on Thursday night, maybe Remain really won after all?!
Handicap changes from Windermere are as follows :-
John Cottam 19 to 18
Paul Greenaway 23 to 22
Phil Matthews 19 to 18
Trevor Middleton 17 to 16
Kev Gerrard 10 to 11
Bill Pye 21 to 22
Mark Thomas 16 to 17 (Booooooo!!)
The updated leaderboard has already been posted to the website by Phil. The overall lead has changed again with John C reclaiming top spot from Kev with Martin Greenaway still in third.
The next outing for the Parrots is that old faithful Kirkby Lonsdale on the 6th July, so unless Cumbria has voted for independence by then, we’ll see you there!
Glenn