Balmoral XVI

It was a beautiful evening for our trip up Deeside for the 16th outing at Balmoral - held just a few days after Gary Coutts' 50th birthday. Gary had arranged for colleagues and local members Duncan Stewart and Fraser Clews to join us to make up three fourballs, with, as required, one Balmoral member in each group. The team photo was the first requirement:

Back row l-r: Ian Stewart, Duncan Stewart, Malcolm Grigor, Hugh Riches, Gary Coutts, Les Gray & Keith Gray.
Front row l-r: Peter Street, Jas Bhagrath, Dick Taylor, Ken Page & Fraser Clews.

The course was looking good, although the greens were, as usual, pretty slow and you had to give the ball a good rap with the putter. Even the midges, by and large, behaved themselves and, as far as we are aware, nobody acquired any ticks to take home with them.

Prince Andrew was spotted, driving his Range Rover, followed by a few Bentley SUV's, which apparently cost upwards of £220K each. We believe it may have been a Chinese trade delegation.

Not surprisingly, the locals dominated the scoring:

Stewart, Duncan	39
Clews, Fraser	38
Bhagrath, Jas	36
Stewart, Ian	35
Coutts, Gary	35
Gray, Keith	34
Riches, Hugh	33
Street, Peter	30
Grigor, Malcolm	26
Taylor, Dick	26
Gray, Les	21
Page, Ken	12

The first team out, consisting of Gary, Jas, Peter and Hugh, comfortably won the team competition, which was the best 3 out of 4 scores. Malcolm got the first nearest the pin and Gary picked up the other plus the longest drive.

As we sat down to the beers and catering that Peter had organised, we presented Gary with a little birthday gift:

It didn't last long:

Duncan became the 9th winner of this outing and the Roll of Honour now reads:

Ian Stewart, Gary Coutts & Norrie Thain - 3 wins each

Malcolm Grigor - 2

Ian Dring, Les Gray, Jas Bhagrath, Brian Lees & Duncan Stewart - 1 each

It's the 4th year in a row that we've managed to have 12 players. Previously, we only had 2 tees and 8 players. Fraser became the 8th "local" to play with us. Gary and I are the only ones with perfect attendance records.