Two years of hard work and regular coaching saw Steve Kirk take the final major of the year, The Hutchinson Salver with a 77 gross nett 68. It was the first time Steve had played a medal round in the 70's. Steve came back to membership two years ago and embarked on coaching with Eddie and has seen his handicap drop from 14.3 to 6.8 in two years - a fantastic achievement. Richard Warwick continued his ever improving form since starting lessons with me and scored a nett 69 for second place. It might not have been the best timing, as Richard has won through to the final of The Lawson Brown due to be played a week on Sunday. Adrian Hinchliffe also scored a nett 69 for third place.

Four Finals were played on Sunday with Keith Williams winning a close match on the 20th hole against Andrew Nicholson in the Intermediate Final. Ben Firth beat Jeff Barnett in the J Arthur Sykes, and Simon Stephens having achieved a lifelong ambition of reaching scratch handicap on Saturday rounded off the weekend nicely beating Michael Jones in the final of The Greenwood Shield. Susan Preston and Glynis Webster beat Denise Watson and Shona Emmett in the final of The Centenary Cup.

The final competition of this year's aggregate is on Saturday with places for The MacKenzie at Royal Melbourne up for grabs. Martyn Robinson made a good move to the top of Division Two with his 7th score below his handicap this year in all competitions, leaving him on -3 in the aggregate. (Yet again a great advert for regular coaching). Steve Kirk made a move on Marcus Shepherd at the top of Division One with his 68 on Saturday and now lays 2 shots behind. So it's all to play for on Saturday.

We are now fully stocked for winter with lots of great looking and performing garments from Galvin Green, Peter Millar, Oscar Jacobson Rohnisch and the great new ProFlex range from ProQuip. Golf has changed so much over the years and with all the new performance materials there is no reason to be cold or playing with too many layers on. Come in and let us show you what we have to offer. 

 

 

It is time of year for maintenance on the course and all the greens have had the drill and fill treatment this week. This involves 2 machines drilling 24 x 18 inch deep holes at a time and then back filling the holes with sand and zeolite (this helps with drainage and retention of nutrients - bit technical but Steve tells me it works!) and then repeating across the green. The purpose is to improve the drainage by getting through to the drainage layer. Many of you will remember this being done 10 years ago, and hopefully also remember the great improvement to the greens. It's never good when the surface of the greens is disrupted, but I'm afraid it is a necessary evil. 

 

The machines in action with the hoppers having to be refilled very quickly by the guys with buckets, to get the idea of how quickly each green takes 2 tonnes of the dressing!!!

Hopefully with the little Indian summer we are experiencing this week the recovery will be a little quicker, and rest assured the boys have been working their socks off to get them as good as they can, because they, like you don't like the greens with more than one hole in them!

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