Captain Manages Changed Redland Bay

Twelve people arrived at Redland Bay to be greeted by suspect weather conditions. A southerly breeze threatened rain all morning, and some fine misty stuff did fall, but not enough to get much of anything wet. New member Micky Reid was keen to sponsor an event so took over those duties today. He opted for a single stableford format, so as we all examined the indexes on the score card we spotted some dramatic differences.

The 10th and 19th greens were being extensively renovated, so those holes were out of play. Looks like the tenth green is being moved leftwards, perhaps to prevent people approaching it from overflying the 11th tee. That makes the left lake now border the green edge, and it’s been doubled in size to cover the entire left-side of the green. To make up for the missing hole, the 14th hole has been split in two, with a 100m par 3 off the original tee to a temporary green just over the lake numbered hole 20, then a temporary tee 250m out from the original green. In addition, a temporary tee chopped about 50m off the 9th hole, so they dropped that to a par four. That leaves the 3rd hole as the only remaining par five on the course, dropping the par to 68. A temporary score card documented all these changes, including new indexes for most of the holes, some of which seemed to be allocated at random.

Demonstrating good change management, captain George Young navigated all of that with no trouble returning 39 stableford points for the win. Tony Mraz was only two points behind getting 37 for the runner up. That’s the first time in while that both placeholder scores have beaten their handicaps, so that’s good to see.

Five pin shots were available and four were won. Unusually for this course, the missing one was not the 13th, but the 4th. The 6th was won by treasurer Steve Friedrichs, with the 13th going to sponsor Micky Reid, 20th to Troy van der Haar and 16th going to Tony Armbruster. Since the usual longest drive hole 14th had been shortened so much, we moved that prize to the 18th, which was also won by Tony Armbruster.

Next game is in a fortnight on August 20. That’s a 7:08 tee-off at Wolston Park, so see you all there.

Slow but Steady for the Treasurer

Nine people arrived at Oxley – we had a few regulars missing. The weather was fine – despite it being the middle of winter, the start wasn’t as cold as feared. It was the captain’s trophy, so the format was stroke and putts, and we began the day off the 10th tee, meaning that the longest drive hole on 12 would be only the third hole of the day.

It seems everyone got off to a slow start, with no-one being able to beat their handicaps. Closest to doing that was treasurer Steve Friedrichs with his 74. Difficult to isolate what was going right for Steve, who’s been lacking his three and four irons for a few weeks now. He did play this same course the previous Tuesday with the Klover Club and used up a lot of bad shots then. Two shots further back was the captain George Young getting the runner up with his 76.

A slow start may explain why our winner also kept his longest drive attempt on 12. Another symptom was no-one getting on a par three until the last chance on 7, that being Tony Armbruster. He did end up three-putting that, but he was doing quite a lot of that towards the end of the round.

Perhaps everyone needs a three-week gap to recharge their batteries. Next game is August 6 at Redland Bay with a 7:30 tee-off.