Boat of Garten

After the disappointment of missing the May outing due to the pandemic, it was back (almost) to normal as we headed over to Boat of Garten on Sunday for what should have been our 70th official outing.

Initially we had thought that we would have 15 in attendance, but Keith was a late withdrawal due to a heavy cold, and there were further changes when both Syd and John M had to withdraw from the second day's golf and the overnight stay.

The event was played in reverse order - i.e. Boat of Garten on the Sunday and Grantown on the Monday. It was unusual to play B.o.G. without a hangover - although that didn't seem to help the scores for most of us.

Conditions on Sunday were very reasonable - calm and mild. First of all, the team photo:

(Missing from the photo were Messrs Waddell, Sharp and Bhagrath)

Our 81 year old maestro, playing off a handicap of 7, again showed us all how it should be done, scoring 37 points. The only other person to get anywhere near this was Malcolm with 35, followed by Raymond with 31 points.

We hot-footed it back to Grantown and the Covid-safe environment of the Grant Arms Hotel. A few ales were downed then everyone showered and changed for dinner, where, a little strangely, we were on two separate tables but the seats were not socially distanced. It was almost as if the hotel assumed we had already divided in to two "bubbles".

It rained overnight and it was a cool and windy start at Grantown. Jas' back was troubling him sufficiently for him to have to withdraw from the second round, so just 11 of lined up on the first tee a little before 9:30 am. It was pretty obvious that, given the absence of Syd, nobody was going to get the 40 + point score that we felt would be needed to overtake Malcolm's overnight lead - and so it proved.

Malcolm's 32 points were more than enough to give him a very comfortable overall win, although John W's excellent 35 points was the best score on the day.

Here's the summary of the scores on both days:

	B.o.G.	Grantown	Total	Gross
	06-Sep	07-Sep	Points	Points
Grigor	35	32	67	47
Gray (L)	29	30	59	33
Moir	27	31	58	32
Orr	31	27	58	38
Waddell	20	35	55	21
Stewart	25	29	54	22
Meany	27	25	52	18
Riches	28	24	52	16
Dring	24	27	51	37
Fulford	27	23	50	18
Sharp	28	18	46	20
Freeman	37	-	37	30
Meaden	23	-	23	3
Bhagrath	18	-	18	-4

The prize-winners were:

Overall winner	Malcolm
2nd overall	Les
3rd overall	Gordon
Scratch	Malcolm
Sunday winner (not overall)	Syd
Monday winner (not overall or Sun)	John
NP's - Sunday	Ian D/Ray
LD - Sunday	John W
NP's - Monday	Ian St/Ray
LD - Monday	Nigel

Gordon presented Malcolm with the trophy:

It was Malcolm's 5th win - his first for 9 years - drawing him level with Dick in the all-time winners table:

Syd	10
Les	8
Ian St	7
Dave	7
Dick	5
Malcolm	5
Ken	3
Terry	3
John D	2
Chris	2
Harry	2
Gordon	2

(Plus solo wins for Bill, Bob, Keith M, Peter, Mike B, Bobby, Dan, Keith G, Jas, Ian D, Steve and Jack).

Malcolm will get the trophy engraved and May, 2020 will have a simple asterisk (*) beside it. I'm pretty sure Marion at the Grant Arms will already have set aside rooms for next year's events on May 9/10 and September 5/6 - get these dates in your diaries now.