Men’s Golf Seniors Report
Thanks to the goodwill of the Club, the seniors were able to play the October Grail on Wednesday of last week with a shotgun start at 9am. We comfortably filled the course, and the arrangement enabled us to have lunch together and then to hold our Annual General Meeting at 2.15pm with a sizeable attendance. I was honoured to be re-elected as Chairman with a new committee installed. We thanked Mel Davies for his excellent work as fixtures secretary and David Paterson for his contribution to the Senior Mixed fixtures under the overall leadership of Siobain Rolston. New committee members include Don McKenzie, and Stephen Jones. In addition, Peter Sabine and Nigel Karmel have been conscripted to provide liaison and leadership for the over eighties team since Peter Rold has had to stand down.
The seniors’ season of matches finally concluded last Monday with a win away at Malden. This left us with an overall record of twelve wins, ten defeats and one halved match. Highlights included new fixtures against the RAC, with a loss at Epsom and a win at Roehampton Club and a comprehensive win against Surbiton as the fixture was restarted after a number of years. Our losing run against the Roehampton Club Ladies continued although some of our team wanted a stewards’ inquiry into the number of shots we were made to give our fellow Club Members!
As far as individual performances in the past year are concerned three seniors, David Paterson, John Cardwell and Anders Grundberg recorded holes in one. But the outstanding achievement was the round of Suresh Vara in the Autumn Medal where he carded a gross 71 and a nett 60 to be the runaway winner.
The health of the seniors’ section is demonstrated by the field of 56 for the October grail. This is almost double the average participation before lockdown. In fact, our monthly competition has had an average field of 53 since March. Senior golf at Roehampton Club is certainly in a healthy state.
The conditions for scoring in the grail were a far cry from those prevailing in the summer and only six of the large field played to their handicaps. All the more remarkable therefore that Adriano Bianchi and John Wyn-Evans scored more than 40 points. Adriano finished with the outstanding score of 43 points while John had a total of 41 points. The top six finishers were
1st Adriano Bianchi 43 Points
2nd John Wyn-Evans 41 Points
3rd Suresh Vara 37 Points
4th Julian Bass 36 Points
5th Tony Durrant 36 Points
6th David Bouch 36 Points
Congratulations to all prize winners.
Yesterday we played a team Stableford with Joker, each player being able to nominate a hole where their points total would be doubled. In November conditions, the course played pretty well. Congratulations to the winning team of Taghi Gorji, Simon Lucas and Ian Taylor Restell scoring a phenomenal 84 Points! The runners up were Douglas Millar, Peter Rogan and Andrew Hine with 81 Points.
A polite reminder to repair pitch marks, replace divots and rake bunkers.