Aldwickbury Park Early Birds

Well it was quite cold this week and that made for some quite random golf. The first hold didn't bode well for Duncan and I as he did his usual grass cutter to the top of the fairway and I sliced into the trees on the right, clearly we both needed to warm up. We found my ball in the leaves with no real back swing. Foolishly I tried to take a shot but managed to bury the ball somewhere directly in front of me. Sadly Pete Laurence didn't follow me in this week to find my ball. Hey ho. Only one birdie this week and it goes to Peter Creighton on 3. Apparently he chipped in from the bunker, clearly preferring that shot to taking relief for the out of play bunkers. Still, no pictures on the scorecard hey Pete? Well done! Scoring was very difficult in the conditions with good shots being punished for accuracy (hitting the green) and some middle of the fairway shots bouncing unkindly left or right to finish in the deep rough. Average gross score was 95 and average stableford was 27.69,

You may recall some time ago me using this picture (or a similar one) to illustrated Roger Small's action each time he placed a ball on a tee having damaged his back. Well, Roger is in the news again, this time for happier reasons although I'll open with a story which has required a bit of research to clarify rules.  To say that Roger was smashing the front 9 on Saturday is an understatement, he had 17 points after 7 holes despite blobbing the 5th hole. The wheels came off a bit off the 8th tee where he found the rough then in his determination to get over the bunker, found the bunker, then.... well, you get the picture.  So, as Roger stood on the 9th tee he was no doubt battling with the emotions from the previous hole but Roger being Tiger like as he is put the last hole behind him and focused all of his might on smashing the ball into next week. The result was nothing if not spectacular, the ball was missed entirely but the wind generated from the power of the swing caused t

  A token guard of honour from myself and Tony to send James on his way for the last round of the year. Congratulations James on a great year of golf! In the week I put in some extra investigative work to discover James' secret and I can reveal that at this time of year it's simply a matter of play whenever you can and don't be deterred by the conditions. Rain, sunshine, wind.... moonlight!? Yes, here is a pic of James teeing off under the moonlight on Friday morning. A determined golfer indeed. This week there was a good turnout despite the constantly dreary conditions of late. We had 17 players turn out although I took an executive decision and discarded John's score as he clearly didn't make the front 9. Martin Deery made the front 9 but I'm assuming he didn't finish the back 9. Slightly better scoring than last week with stableford average of 27.75 and gross average of 95.6. We did have 7 players with 30 or more this week but the range for those players