St Andrews' Outing 2021

A beautiful day yesterday for our annual trip to the Auld Grey Toun and, after some last minute shuffling around, we managed a nice neat 4 fourballs. Syd and Harry has earlier had to cancel and had been replaced by Jas and Raymond, and John Meaden had to call off the day before - Gary stood in for him. Most of us gathered for the usual team photo on the first tee - I don't think we've ever managed to get everyone in the picture and this year was no exception with Les and Gordon AWOL when the starter took this photo:

l-r: Jas Bhagrath, Keith Gray, Raymond Orr, Malcolm Grigor, Dick Taylor, Gary Grant, Ken Black, Ian Dring, Jack Simpson, Hugh Riches, Nigel Meany, Rob Pollard, Ian Stewart & Ian Sharp. We felt the coastal breeze at the start but layers were very soon shed as the morning heated up and the sun blazed down. The bunkers proved to be challenging to a few of us - I encountered this problem as early as the second hole, up against the steep face of this fairway trap:

I thought that was pretty rough until I later was shown Jack's plight - actually in the beautifully rivetted face:

Here's a few more on-course pics, courtesy of Rob and Ian - starting with Raymond booming another one down the middle, backdropped by the only on-course tree:

Post golf, 14 of us retired once more to the nearby Steak Barn at Balgove Larder for some craft beers and lovely steaks:

Now for the prizegiving - we had 3 NP's won respectively by Nigel, Les and Ken, and, for the first time ever, two Longest Drives, separated by age. Ian D won the sexagenarian section and Rob the septuagenarian one, prompting a typical Rob pose:

As overall individual winner, Ken was much more modest for his photo:

Full scores:

The St Andrews trip is always one of our favourites and this year was no exception. Over to you for next year, Ken!