Aldwickbury Park Early Birds

The weather report for Harpenden, UK. Becoming cloudy in the afternoon.. High temperature of 11degC with a low temperature of 5degC. No rain with a relative humidity of 80.6%. Wind speed of 16.9mph gusting to 28.2mph. Cloud cover was 41.7% with a visibility of 6.2%. UV index was 5. A cold start to the day as temperatures had finally dropped and we have had a little rain. Very windy on the course made golf difficult. Course condition is improving as the netting had been removed from the 10th and 11th greens. The fairways are still quite poor especially the eighth. The club is introducing the optional use of mats on the fairways later in the year and a selection are available in the Pro Shop. Order yours by the 26th October for a discounted price. Some issues with double booking as another group had the same time as us, 8:28. They had a booking on EliteLive and we had a confirmation booking on Jock's phone. Obviously a glitch in the matrix. Some excellent recovery shots today from An...

Weather was fair today, no rain, no wind and pleasantly warm. The course changes are looking great with the new bunkers, however the 10th, 11th and 13th greens have all suffered due to some maintenance issues. Some of the holes looked like a crazy golf course mixed with a building site with all the orange netting around them. Quite difficult to navigate your way around on some holes. Fortunately a number of drops zones have been made available.  A small field today of 10 players with a few on holiday and James and Duncan playing in the Family Foursomes, Chris Pearce couldn't quite hide his delight in beating James and Duncan. The main battle today came from group 3 with Paul, Martin Deery and Andy all fighting for the lead. Andy cheering Paul along as Andy would win the front 9 if Paul won overall. Martin Lythgoe was a contender until he decided to change his split ball on the sixteenth and then put his brand new ProV1 out of bounds never to be found. Paul, Martin Deery and Andy sp...

Good weather greeted us today and the last group was Paul Gardner, Tony Froud, Roger Gibbs and James Miller who would be our winner? An early start of 9:30am would mean we finish at a reasonable hour and we would not catch any traffic on the way home. The course was much quieter than yesterday and we managed to get around in just over four hours. Ground under repair on the 9th hole Baby bunny rabbits in the ground under repair on the 9th hole Prizes were awarded after the round with nearest the pins getting a sleeve of Titleist ProV1 each. Overall winner and second place and winners, second, F9 and B9 for each day also getting monetary prizes. The trophy for the winner of the Autumn cup was awarded to Martin Lythgoe well done Martin. Best gross of the day was a fine 84 by Jason, no prizes for best gross though, sorry Jason. Everybody said what a great time they had but based on the condition of the course they would prefer to go somewhere else next year. Martin has the pleasure of arra...

So back to Wokefield Golf Club for the Earlybirds Autumn Cup. This year organised by last year's winner Martin Deery. We managed to make 15 starters this year with Roger Small being allowed out to play and Coenraad joining us late due to a misunderstanding that he had entered but hadn't.  The weather was fair but quite windy and the course, like most others, had suffered due to the very hot summer. The worst part by far were the bunkers full of footprints, both human and animal. Greens were somewhat inconsistent, some fast, some slow and some fast and slow depending on where you were.  Anyway onto the golf , Paul won the day on countback from Roger Gibbs on a mediocre 33 points. The whole field was covered by eight points if you ignore one outlier. Could either of them or indeed James or Tony maintain their form through to the second day and take the trophy? After the golf we had a very nice meal but unlike last year there was no Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup didn't seem to...

This was the last Swindle golf before the Earlybirds Autumn Cup who would be the inform golfer today and take it forward to the Autumn Cup? Dan Smith put on a splendid show taking first with 38 points, unfortunately for him he is not playing in the Autumn Cup but second place Jason his can he maintain the form? Dan had an amazing 22 points on the front nine before slipping back slightly with a 16 on the back. Roger Small winning the front nine with some consistent form of late. Well done to Steve Brewerton taking the back nine with 16 points, actually tied with three others but won on countback, Steve had a very solid last four holes which helped. Other news, after analysing the "data" the club has decided to go to 28 days booking rather than 14 days. Not sure how that is going to help anybody! The average gross score today was 95.50 and the average Stableford score was 30.88. Best gross of the day was from Jason Landau with 85. There were 0 Eagles or better today. There...

The course is undergoing a lot of maintenance work with new bunkers being installed or repositioned, the greens have also been hollow tyned and sanded. I'm sure all this work make the course much better in the future. Last week's Captain's day resulted in a haul of prizes for the Earlybirds and ex Earlybirds. Duncan, 1st team Paul, 2nd team Andy, 4th team Roger G, nearest in 2 on 18th Peter C, 4th team and second best stableford Coenraad nearest the pin On to today's golf, James is our winner today with 33 points and Martin Deery coming in second with 32. Well done to both of you. Some fine front nine scores of 18 points apiece for Dan and Coenraad. Reports of Roger's lost Pink Panther head cover had a good outcome after he found that he had dropped it loading his car in morning. From on course reporter Roger Gibbs "On the 2nd Hole, drive just short of the bunkers. Hit a 5 iron dead straight on the flag and caught a rather large branch on the tree on the left. ...