Captain's Day
Captain's Day saw 165 members enjoying the hospitality of The Captain at half way and probably saw Moortown in the best condition I have seen it in my time here.
Steve and the team have got the course into great shape, the greens running at good speed and with fantastic grass coverage - hard to fault in any area.
Personally it was literally a bit of a half marathon as I decided to walk the 10th with every group, covering 13 ½ miles and being beaten by 32 of the 165 field - Scott Harrison was the lucky one of the 32 winning the raffle prize of a SkyCaddie.
It was Steve O'Loughlin who produced "the best round of my life at Moortown" to win Captain's Day with 40 points. Iain Robb beat a group of three others (David Marriott, Neil Webster and Gerry Connolly) on 39 points courtesy of the best back nine, with Best Gross going to Andrew Jones with 2 under par 38pts. Best Junior went to Max Hakin on his 15th birthday!
The Captain then guided a team to victory against the MCC on Sunday, and again on a very wet Wednesday saw off a Lindrick team, playing foursomes for the first time in a match due to the weather.
Open qualification
Unfortunately Nick McCarthy and Ben Firth fell short of the very difficult 3 places on offer at final qualifying for The Open. Nick finished on +4 6 shots outside of the playoff for 3rd place, it sounds a lot but if the double bogey and bogey on the 2nd hole had been replaced with last year's birdie and eagle he's in the playoff, such close margins. Ben found out how difficult Hillside can be but I'm sure will gain from the experience.
The Open Sweepstake
With The Open just a couple of weeks away we are again running the Sweepstake in the shop. Tickets are £5 per square to enable as many of you as possible to get a player which is still in my eyes the best of the majors. Royal Troon normally throws up an American winner; the last seven winners at Troon have been American.
I hope it's not a rank outsider like Todd Hamilton in 2004. The last three at Troon have been first time major winners so the man I'm going for is Rickie Fowler.
He's been a little off form just recently but loves the links having won the Scottish Open at Gullane last year.
In conjunction with Titleist we are running a fantastic offer on the ProV1 and ProV1x ball for The Open.
Buy two dozen balls and receive a limited edition cap and ball marker worth over £25.
Free of Charge.