Balmoral XXIII

What a scorcher of a day for our 23rd annual outing to Balmoral. We gathered at Banchory Golf Club car park and boarded our coach at 4 pm prompt, heading westwards through Deeside. Our host, Gary Coutts was waiting at the Balmoral gates to greet us and escort us in to the estate.

Due to further knee injuries, Gary was unable to take part in the golf this year, but he had recruited regular Brian Lees plus Michael Muir and Richard Tait - the latter a low handicapper (4.5) from Braemar. We had been coming to Balmoral since 2001 and the guest green fee had stuck rigidly at just £10 throughout this period, but this year saw an increase of 50% to £15.

The King has already made a number of changes at Balmoral, not least at the golf club, which is now run by the members, independently of the estate, which now supplies - at a cost - various services to the club, including greenkeeping. The course was definitely looking much better than last year and the fairways and rough were much more playable. They still have issues with the greens to sort, however.

First of all, the team photo on the first tee:

Brian Lees was a little too late and missed out but the rest of the line-up, from l-r:
Richard Tait, Ian Stewart, Nigel Meany, Jas Bhagrath, Michael Muir, Dick Taylor, Ken Black, Hugh Riches, Keith Gray, Ian Dring & John Waddell.
Photo taken by Gary Coutts.

A few other photos taken by me on the way round:

Prince Albert on the right of the 1st fairway, looking across at Queen Victoria on the other side

Crathie Kirk from the 2nd tee

Estate house on the left of the 18th fairway, famously once clattered by the much-missed Les Gray

Three fourballs started but Jas, not having played for the last year, had to retire at the turn after 9 holes. We could not initially find the course scoring adjustment chart so decided to just play off full handicaps. We later found out that we should, on average, have reduced our handicaps by 3 strokes, so the following individual stableford scores should be taken with a little pinch of salt:

Richard and Hugh got the NP's at 5th & 11th and John W the LD at the 16th. The team competition, based on the best 2 stableford scores at each hole, was declared null and void by me. The first team out - Richard, Nigel, Keith and Ken - were mortally offended by this decision as their score of 89 points was 6 points better than that of the last team out - me, Brian, Ian D and Jas. However, as earlier stated, this wasn't a level playing field as Jas could only play half a round. The team scores for those first 9 holes was level at 44 each.

Precedent has it that an appropriate adjustment is made to a 3 man team's score when playing against a 4 man team. On a pro-rata basis this would have made my team the winners but I felt this would have been totally unfair so the only - and easiest - way out was for me to scrap the team prizes. No doubt this decision will not be forgotten by some. Have pity on the poor organiser who picked the teams.

Anyway, we had a good laugh in the clubhouse afterwards, as witnessed by this selfie:

This was only the 9th time that Brian had taken part in the event but he became the first player to have won 4 times. There have been 11 separate winners so far:

 A total of 34 players have taken part in the 23 events played to date - 21 from Banchory and 13 from our hosts. Nobody has played in every event but Dick, Jas and myself have each only missed one. Our host Gary has taken part 20 times.

We departed Balmoral just after 11 pm and all were safely home shortly after midnight.