Aldwickbury Park Early Birds

This is a late newsletter as I have been on holiday to Finland, Estonia and Latvia. Very interesting places if you fancy going. Ate Reindeer and Elk, very nice and they also do Bear but couldn't find anywhere that had any. If anybody remembers Wicker's World this sounds like one of his travel shows, I thought I could call mine Gardner's World but I think that is already taken!   Anyway back to the golf, Class of the field today was James with a great score 77 and a Stableford of 39 points. From James "Pete W. Andy and I had an enjoyable Round with Lucky TonE. There were of course plenty of accusations of low handicap luck and bemoaning that as a high handicap Tony doesn’t get luck. Tony had put a different club in the bag today. A chipper. It didn’t really work that well some times coming off too low going past the hole other times popping up and stopping short. He gave up with it and on 16 chipped in for a par with his wedge. Proving that Tony is lucky after all. He o...

  Weather was chilly to start with but then improved to a sunny day from about 11:00am onwards. The greens hard again but running true. A lot of working going on around the course. Bunkers being filled in on the 5th and paths repaired between the 13th and 14th. Evidence of the sprinklers now working and also a new gate constructed to allow emergency services access to the club located near the 11th tee. Congratulations to Lucky Tony who had a hole in one on the 7th on the Par 3 course whilst playing golf with his grandson. Congratulations to Peter Laurence winning his doubles match with his partner Lee Edwards, they had to go to the 20th hole. A good win for Roger today with a grand 37 points. Duncan second with 35 points, a repeat of the positions for the JJ cup. If history repeats itself they should come last and second last next week. I myself (Paul) had a dire time in the bunkers again which put paid to any decent score. Twice I hit a great bunker shot on the third attempt! All...

The weather was glorious today not too hot, the course was looking splendid however the greens were quite hard. For me (Paul) the day did not start to well, at 7:30am, not quite up yet, I realised that my tee time was 7:40am not the normal 8:30ish. So a quick message to my playing partners that I would be late and meet them on the second or third, a quick splash and dash in the bathroom, load up the car and high tail it to the club. I got there at 7:40am and ran to the first tee. My group was halfway down the first fairway, fortuitously Duncan had put his tee shot into the trees so they were somewhat delayed. I caught them up but did not play the first. Lovely drive for me on the second but stuck the next into the trees on the left, managed to get a six for my limited efforts. I thought at this stage all was lost. What followed was quite a good round and I ended up on 36 points, oh for the missed first. We finished around 11:30 my three playing partners left after a drink and a bite to...

For Day 2 we once again had good weather. A late start at 12:30pm meant a lot of sitting around after breakfast. Day 2 took us to the Signature Course a much easier course so the Course Rating suggested. That wasn't born out in our scores however. Day two was a normal Swindle day with cash prizes, so Swindle handicaps and no winners' adjustments. The leading score today was only 35 points. The top two from Day 1 now taking the bottom two places. What happened there! Well done to Brian who took the honours with Martin Deery a close second. On the hole that Dan Smith took the nearest the pin, he also found out that Luton had won and Tony was informed that he was a Grandfather again. Congratulations to you both. Many commented that they actually preferred the Signature to Championship course.  Cash prizes were actually awarded this year unlike the two previous years. Well done to all the winners. From reporter Brian Quote of the weekend “I’ve always considered myself to be quite l...

Group Photo Roger Small receiving the trophy from John James A return visit to the Nottinghamshire Golf Club, last year the weather was poor in the run up and not too good when we got there, coupled with poor conditions at the Belfry and atrocious conditions the last time we went to Greetham Valley it was a pleasant surprise to have good weather for both days. This year we started on the Championship course and ran the JJ Cup first, therefore no warm up game. The competition was run, as normal, with WHS handicaps. The course was undergoing changes last year but they appear to be completed. Both courses have water on many holes and necessitate some thought on where you are going to hit the ball. Not that some of us have that sort of control over our shots. The only real complaint we had about the course was about the greens, they were quite bumpy and you had to be firm with your putts. A great turn out of 18 players with Dan Smith joining us for the first time. Great to have Brian join ...

Very windy conditions today coupled with hard greens made scoring very difficult. A low average Stableford score of 28.93 clearly shows this. Excellent win today by Pete Laurence who also won the Club Mid Month Stableford, well done Pete. Two others scored 33 points in our Swindle game, Martin Deery took second with Dan missing out. Not much to report from the course today so I shall talk about my 20ft long putt for par on the 9th, after I hit it I thought it was going to miss by a mile so muttered "Rubbish" only to watch it drop into the hole. Always best to talk to your ball after you hit it! Next week 18 of us are off to the Northamptonshire Golf club for the JJ Cup, our second visit to the club with Brian winning last year. Hopefully the weather will be kinder to us as last year it was quite wet prior to going with a ban on buggies on the Championship course. There was also a lot of work going on so it will be interesting to see how it has changed. Lots of water so bring ...