Breakfast on Monday morning was lovely - but then the troubles began. I referred in my earlier post to admin cock-ups - the first was pretty serious and could have been disastrous. I wasn't sure exactly what our tee time was on Monday morning so I checked with the hotel reception - all the bookings are made through the Grant Arms. Their golf girl (Heather) wasn't there, but the receptionist checked the correspondence for me and said it was a 10 am start.
Virtually all of us had breakfasted by just after 8 am anyway, so there appeared to be absolutely no rush, but most of us set off for Boat of Garten before 9 am anyway. On the way, I got a slightly frantic call from Harry, who said that he was at the club and did we realise our first tee time was 9:12 am? On arrival, I immediately went to the pro shop as I felt sure they had made a mistake - after all, we had just checked at the hotel and they had confirmed a 10 am start. No mistake, said the pro - you've all got to be off the tee by 9:30 am latest as they have other groups booked on after us.
There was a short tete-a-tete but, with time marching on, the only realistic thing to do was to rush everyone on to the first tee. There had to be a little bit of shuffling of the groups, but, by and large, we managed - with one exception - the leader, Jas. He, like everyone else, had been told by the hotel, that it was a 10 am start, and, having had a heavy night swapping whiskies with a couple of bankers - and Ken - until 1 am, Jas made the most of the sleep time he thought was available. He was last seen by one of our group appearing for breakfast at 8:55 am, so it was no surprise that he didn't get to the golf course until almost 9:45 am - by which time, we in the last group were halfway up the 2nd fairway.
Not the best of starts for Jas - he did try and play the 2nd hole but duffed his drive, so his first two holes were blanks and he was now no longer the leader. He made a fair fist of things thereafter, however, and finished on 28 points on the day and a respectable 2 day aggregate of 65 points - good enough for 4th place overall in the end.
The overnight and early morning heavy rain had certainly dampened down the course - and it stopped just in time for our start. It was pretty wet wading through the rough however - as we often had to do - and shorts were a better option than getting trousers soaked - Keith and Ian had the sense to do this, but I didn't have time to change, scurrying around trying to get everyone away in time:
The winner on the day - by a country mile, and with one of the best scores recorded in recent times - was Harry, with 41 points. Les got 40 points at the Boat 3 years ago, and Syd has been close to this a couple of times since, but Harry's score yesterday was terrific - a gross 75 - no birdies, 13 pars and 5 bogeys. Of course, he also won the Longest Drive at the 18th as well - again by a country mile.
Peter got Nearest the Pin at the 9th - after a close measure with Jas - but Jas was the only one to hit the green at the 16th hole - nobody had managed at the 3rd and it was carried forward.
The team prizes went to Dan, Malcolm, Ken and Bill, who, amazingly, all scored more than 30 points, so their best three stableford points total was 123, beating the other two teams by some distance (109 & 95).
Next best individual Monday score was Malcolm, with 36 points, which was more than enough to give him the trophy with an aggregate score of 69 points - and, remember, he had voluntarily deducted 2 points from his Grantown score after his indiscretion in the hazard at the 9th. This was Malcolm's 4th win, levelling with me in 5th place overall in the all-time stakes. It took Malcolm 17 years and 34 attempts to win his first BoG in September 2002, but he, like Syd, is making up for all those early disappointments now.
Malcolm also, of course, won the scratch event with 53 points, with me next best on 46.
Bill Whyman got second place overall with a total of 67 points, and I was 3rd one point further behind. All the stats will be published on the Yahoo site shortly.
Malcolm did the honours at the Boat Inn, Aboyne afterwards - and made reference in his acceptance speech to the unfortunate circumstances whereby defending champion Syd had to miss out this time. We got to the pub somewhat earlier than usual due to the second of the admin cock-ups - no lunch had been booked at the golf club! I had thought that this was all pre-arranged by the hotel, but apparently we are supposed to do this ourselves. Mea culpa.
Here's Malcolm receiving his trophy - and the team photo taken outside the clubhouse just as the rain started again:
Looks like Malcolm will be organising the same Grantown/BoG package again next May - get the dates in your diary now - Sunday/Monday 13th/14th May, 2012.
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