What a great weekend for our 74th (official) outing to Boat of Garten and very well done to Rob who will now be the 27th name to be engraved on the prestigious trophy. Both Boat of Garten and Spey Valley were looking great and the weather was lovely - well organised, Syd!
There will now actually be 76 engravings on the trophy as September, 1992 appears as "rained off" (the only time this has happened) and May, 2020 has a Covid asterisk against it.
Prior to the trophy being introduced in May, 1986 there were actually 3 outings which don't appear in the official records. The very first outing was in September, 1984 and was won by Dick.
Defending champion Syd remains well ahead at the top of the all-time leader board. Multiple winners of the trophy are:
There are solo wins from another 16 players - Bill Miller, Bob Cooper, Keith Murray, Peter Street, Mike Brogan, Bobby Fyfe, Dan Corbett, Keith Gray, Jas Bhagrath, Chris Dickinson, Ian Dring, Steve Fulford, Jack Simpson, Ken Black, Hugh Riches and now Rob Pollard.
Rob patiently waited for his first win but remember it took the maestro Syd 14 years before his first win. From those that took part back in the 1980's, Malcolm took 17 years before winning it, but the record goes to Jas, whose 2012 victory came after 27 years and over 50 attempts.
Anyway, back to this weekend. Here's the team at the start:
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| l-r: John Davies, Gordon Moir, Rob Pollard, John Meaden, Syd Freeman, Hugh Riches, Dick Taylor, an unusually camera-shy Harry Salter, Nigel Meany, Keith Gray, Ken Page and Ian Stewart |
Boat of Garten was in great nick and was much more playable than it normally is in September when the heather and the gorse usually cause mayhem. This time the greenkeepers had been hard at work and had cleared a lot of the worst of it, so if you strayed off the fairways you could always find your ball and it was usually playable, which was reflected in the scoring. Rob scored a magnificent 41 points with the nearest challengers being me and Keith, both with 36. Rob was so good that he could even play left-handed:
Back to the Grant Arms in Grantown - some ale while watching the Boks destroy Scotland. Dinner was good as usual and then it was back to the conference room for some to watch the Wales - Fiji match.
Monday morning didn't look promising. We awoke to heavy skies, low cloud and rain. There had been altercations overnight with some of the residents experiencing the rain coming in to their rooms. The hotel were having some work done to the roof and the contractors had merely tarpaulined it over the weekend. Cue angry tourists.
It's a fairly short drive to Spey VALLEY golf course in Aviemore - 20-25 minutes south west - but there was a major faux pas from Gordon, who had never played there before. He keyed his destination in to his SatNav - Spey BAY golf club. After driving north for 20 minutes or so, he was a little alarmed to see that his SatNav said there was still another 50 minutes of driving in front of him. Urgent phone calls to various members of our group put him right and he quickly u-turned back south again - unfortunately not quick enough to make our start time.
Rob, Keith and I set off as a 3-ball in the last group and Gordon joined us on the 3rd tee having purloined another buggy from the starter. Our champion elect thought it was time for a photo to prove he had made it:
Tremendous views at Spey Valley. The greens were considerably slower than Boat of Garten's and, despite almost 2 decades of growth since it first opened, the fairways haven't completely knitted yet. The bunker sand was beautifully white although a bit deeper than ideal - that didn't stop Rob, who loved them and managed to get up and down each time he was in one.
After a slightly shaky front nine, when Keith briefly got within 2 shots of his overall total, Rob recovered on the back nine with a very tidy 19 points to give him a total of 31 and an unbeatable aggregate of 72. Rob became the second oldest winner of the trophy at the age of 74. Syd, of course, has already beaten that 3 times - at 75 in 2014, at 78 in 2021 and at 84 in May this year.
After soup and sannies in the clubhouse, Syd presented Rob with the trophy:
Here's all the aggregate scores:
Interesting to note that the average points scored at Boat of Garten was 29.1, whereas it was just 24.8 at Spey Valley. Rob alluded to that back at the Boat Inn in Aboyne when he reminded us that next year - surprise, surprise - we'll all be a year older and he therefore thought it might be appropriate to revisit Grantown rather than Spey Valley. Watch this space.
Another big anniversary for the Boat of Garten outing is coming up in the next year or two - our 40th anniversary. Next September (2024), it'll be exactly 40 years since the first (pre-trophy) outing, although it'll only be our 39th official year. The proper 40th anniversary will be in 2025 - ten years after we had our 30:60 celebrations. Maybe 40:80 shirts then - if we're spared! 🤞
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