2018 Hawkstone Park Match Report
For the Parrots weekend away, it was a new venue this year at Hawkstone Park in Shropshire. 16 people made the trip to play what, I’m pretty sure, everyone agreed were two excellent courses, that we’d all like to play again in the future.
Making the group up to a round 16 were a couple of Kev Gerrards mates, and newcomers to the Parrots, Scotsmen Tom Meek and Ken Dalziel, together with Phil Matthews, making his first appearance of the year to give his injured shoulder a run out, safe in the knowledge that any disasters on that front would leave him with his other arm to drink with!
On the Sunday, we played the excellent Championship course. A tough course with some excellent holes and variety, penal if you were off the cut grass but there was a generous amount of that, so fairly presented. Only five scores in the 30’s that day, with Warren and JP just making it there with 30pts apiece. JP looked odds on the winner of the day for me until the ladies competition ahead of us had slowed things up to such an extent that all FOUR of our groups were on the Par 3 17th waiting for the ladies to play it!! This contributed to the round taking 5 hours to complete, and the wait took its toll with four of the sixteen strong field not scoring on either of the last two holes. Sadly John was one of these.
Finishing with 31pts, and third place, was new boy Tom, but tied on 33pts apiece were Kev and Mike. Now if you’ve read enough match reports in the past, you will already know that Mike never wins a card playoff, so the day’s win was duly awarded to Kev!
A decent meal in the evening followed, with entertainment provided by the last day of the US Open (or so we thought) and a couple of sweeps. One for the score of the Brazil v Switzerland World Cup game and one for the winner of the US Open.
Now Hawkstone Park must be unique in the country as being the only hotel where there wasn’t a single TV in the hotels bar or restaurant, so guess what, no golf to watch there. There was a TV in the Golf Centre’s bar, but the staff there had not anticipated that a group of golfers on a golf weekend staying at a golf centre, might want to watch a bit of ...... er golf, and the bar was shut!! However, after representations to the manager, this decision was reversed and sanity in the world was restored.
Who won the sweeps? Well JP pulled out 1-1 in the football game (kerching!) and last year’s winner in the US Open (which was the same person he had pulled out last year in the sweep!), So Brooks Koepka and JP both became back to back winners, although I suspect Brooks earned considerably more for his achievement!
The usual reverse order format saw the final group on Monday consist of Kev, Mike, Tom and Warren. A similarly challenging course as the day before, making it difficult for folks to choose a favourite, saw just four scores in the 30’s this time. Melvin recovered from just 11pts on the front nine to come back in with 19pts making a 30pt total. I slipped into 3rd place on the day with a steady 31pts, just pipped for second by a resurgent Mark Thomas (Mark had only registered 20pts on Day 1) with 32pts. But in a repeat performance of the aforementioned Tommo, Kev Gerrard managed to win both days, taking the second day with an excellent 34pts. So well done to Kev.
A full run down of the scores, prizes and handicap movements from the weekend, are as follows :-
1st Kev Gerrard 33 & 34 for 67 (11 to 9) Prize for Overall 1st
2nd Mike Barnes 33 & 28 for 61 (no change) Prize for Day 1 1st
3rd Glenn Wellard 28 & 31 for 59 (no change) Prize for Overall 2nd
4th Tom Meek 31 & 26 for 57 (19 to 20) Prize for Day 1 2nd
5th John Patterson 30 & 25 for 55 (8 to 9) Prize for Overall 3rd
6th Mark Thomas 20 & 32 for 52 (17 to 16) Prize for Day 2 1st
7th Mel Johnson 21 & 30 for 51 (17 to 18) Prize for Day 2 2nd
8th Pete Whiteside 29 & 22 for 51 (11 to 12)
9th Warren Murphy 30 & 21 for 51 (21 to 22)
10th Martin Greenaway 28 & 22 for 50 (8 to 9)
11th Ken Dalziel 16 & 29 for 45 (19 to 20)
12th Trevor Middleton 20 & 25 for 45 (21 to 23)
13th Tony Johnson 16 & 28 for 44 (18 to 20)
14th Andy Smith 16 & 27 for 43 (26 to 28)
15th Bill Pye 17 & 25 for 42 (25 to 27)
16th Phil Matthews 15 & 26 for 41 (18 to 20)
The updated leaderboard has already been posted to the website by Phil, with TJ holding onto his lead from Mike now in second place as 10 players have now completed five rounds or more.
The next outing on the tour was Accrington, which has already been held, and we await Michaels report from that, as I was otherwise engaged on a mammoth 19 mile hike in the Lake District. But that’s another story!
So the real next outing is now Bentham on the more usual Wednesday 4th July. See you there!
Glenn
