Match Report Rossendale Golf Club 2017
The second outing of the 2017 Parrots golf season was held at Rossendale Golf Club last Wednesday. Apologies for the later than usual report from the day, on account of the intervening four man golf tour to Monmouthshire and Shropshire (won, incidentally, by yours truly thanks to some wonderful bank shots off the trees of St Pierre and Shifnal. See Mike, Jim and Geoff for the details!!)
It was another fine Parrots outing weather wise, dry, sunny at times and light winds. The course was very dry and although not up to its usual standard was very playable. The early question of the day was, would Mike and Jim get to the course on time since their Sat Nav seemed to have moved Rossendale to the end of the M65! Fortunately, after backtracking, Mike’s aging memory spotted a familiar looking road and they eventually made it with 20 minutes to spare. No more mention of that late arrival by me at Bentham on a Sunday now please Mike!!
There were 13 players in the morning 10 holes, with myself and Peter Hoole (making his second outing with the Parrots) turning up for the afternoon, and missing that long slog up the 10th and the subsequent walk back to the clubhouse!
Like Heysham, the morning round was again shared. A very good 21pts each by Frank Healey and Trevor Middleton took the spoils, so well done to those guys.
The fine weather allowed the players to lunch outside on the large balcony, where the draw was done for the afternoon round by an unwitting Pete Hoole, who became the pantomime villain that put Frank Healey into the only three-ball of the afternoon! Disaster for Franky !!
But, despite this, Frank posted yet another good score for the season of 34pts, with one of his fellow three-ballers, Stuart Weston, coming in with 33pts. Congratulations to Stuart, who has been in the golfing doldrums in recent times owing to a dodgy shoulder, and this was his best score posted for two years. These two had a long wait to see if their scores were going to be good enough to earn them some cash.
Next out were myself, Mike, Jim and Trevor. It wasn’t to be for Trevor and Mike, who had as much luck finding the holes with his putter as he did finding the course at the start of the day! Jim’s valiant 32pts was pipped by myself with 33pts, secured by a tricky 2-putt from off the green on the 18th. Indeed, with a better back 9 score than Stuart this put me into second place.
The third group’s best challenger was Marky T with 32pts, a decent score by another fellow with a dodgy arm (elbow in Mark’s case). So it was all down to the last group out.
Lowest score from this group was a 29pts from Pete Whiteside, followed by a creditable 31pts from our early tournament leader Phil Matthews. But it was Pete Hoole and TJ who were having a ‘Dual in the Sun’ for the days’ top prize. Four pointers from TJ on the 5th and 12th holes were matched by a fine birdie by Pete on the Par 4 14th hole and a Par on the 16th meaning that these two stood on the 18th tee level with 34pts each already in the bag.
But then, disaster for the big hitting newcomer. Peter put two drives on the risk reward last hole out of bounds, allowing TJ’s five for 2pts to seal the win with a very good 36pts. Was it a mental lapse by Peter caused by his trolley battery giving out after only five holes leading him to have to push a heavy cart round the rest of the course? I guess we’ll never know. The only consolation for Peter was that he did at least win the card playoff from Frank to take second place.
But at last someone has played to their handicap in the 2017 season! So congratulations to Tony, who wins the second round of the Parrots season, making it a Last Orders 1-2 with his drinking buddy Phil who won at Heysham.
Handicap revisions from Rossendale were as follows :-
Tony Johnson 22 to 20
Peter Hoole 13 to 12
Frank Healey 12 to 11
Stuart Weston 15 to 14
Trevor Middleton 18 to 19
Bill Pye 22 to 23
There was a consolation in the overall leaderboard for Franky. His two good scores have led to him topping the table on 66pts from 2 matches. All the scores and the updated table are already available at the website www.parrotsgolf.co.uk
Next up on the tour is Clitheroe, which was won last year by Kev Gerrard’s 37pts. Mike’s worried about low numbers at this event, which would put him in schtuck with the Clitheroe hierarchy. So if you can make it a week on Friday (26th May), Mike will be more pleased than usual to see you there!
Cheers Glenn
