BSV Golf

HNY + 2012 golf breaks

2012-01-05T06:38:00.001-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Yes, it's a Happy New Year to all my regular readers - and welcome to the 2012 blog.

I wouldn't like anyone to get the impression that we're desperate for numbers on some of our outings - we're not - but I think it's only fair that everyone is aware of what's going on and gets an equal opportunity to participate in any of the events they fancy.

My last blog posting pre-Christmas listed the dates and locations of all the main events in 2012, and I've also since posted details of this year's slightly later Desert Classic in Turkey. For those that have never been away with the group, the gentlest introduction, given that it's only one night away, is the Grantown/Boat of Garten trip on Sunday/Monday 13th/14th May, 2012. This is being organised by last September's winner, Malcolm Grigor, and if you'd like to join us, or would like further details, contact Malcolm at malcolmgrigor@gmail.com

One other relatively short trip we do is the Summer Tour, and this year we're visiting a part of the country we've never golfed in before - Dumfries and Galloway. We drive down there on Saturday 7th July and play the Classic Southerness (http://www.southernessgolfclub.com/homepage.html) course in the afternoon.

We stay 2 nights at the Cairndale Hotel (http://www.cairndalehotel.co.uk/) and play Dumfries & County (http://www.thecounty.org.uk/) on Sunday and Powfoot (http://www.powfootgolfclub.com/) on Monday morning, then drive home. Our Southern former colleagues - John Davies, Bob Cooper and John Taylor - are all heading North and will be joining us on this trip. Let me know asap if you would like to join us too.

All downhill from here

2011-12-21T11:51:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The shortest day today means we're on our way now to the next golf season - just 97 days until the Summer Quaich starts again - whoopee! Here's the dates for your diary in 2012:

From	To	Event/Outing	Location	Days to finish
06-Nov-11	25-Mar-12	Winter Grand Prix	Banchory	94
20-Apr-12	26-Apr-12	Desert Classic	Turkey	126
13-May-12	14-May-12	Boat of Garten	Grantown/B.o.G.	144
tbc	tbc	Blairgowrie	Blairgowrie
22-Jun-12	22-Jun-12	Midsummer	tbc	183
25-Jun-12	25-Jun-12	Balmoral	Balmoral	186
07-Jul-12	09-Jul-12	Summer Tour	Dumfries & Galloway	200
28-Mar-12	29-Aug-12	Summer Quaich	Banchory	251
31-Aug-12	31-Aug-12	Terry's Memorial	Aboyne	253
02-Sep-12	03-Sep-12	Boat of Garten	Grantown/B.o.G.	256
03-Oct-12	09-Oct-12	Iberian Cup	Mallorca	292

Xmas Party night

2011-12-18T05:22:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Our annual get-together was held at the golf club's Xmas Party last night. We had 2 tables:

But what on earth is Dick doing with this After Eight on his forehead?:

The answer is in this short video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrfdb4V3mzA&feature=autoplay&list=UUBDeleoM99bWx2-P6rMydgA&lf=plcp&playnext=1

IC XIII videos

2011-11-18T05:31:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

A few short video clips available to view on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DgyBr24wC4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2FHRBeYwxE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU08OStcmLY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBpXAavO9YY

Enjoy!

IC XIII photo stories (2)

2011-11-06T01:49:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Tuesday took us back to Las Americas, which was looking in great condition. After our round we had lunch at what we now regard as "our" table on the terrace. The waiters there are long-serving and we recognised a few of them from our last IC trip here in 2006. We asked one of them to take a team photo - he agreed, grabbed the camera and thrust it into Archie's hand, asking him to stand up, then he took Archie's seat!:

We were back at our hotel in good time and a few of us went for a swim/sleep/sunbathe whilst others played bridge, after which there was a gathering on the roof terrace for G & T's and to admire the wonderful sunsets over La Gomera:

Archie organised dinner at a local Thai restaurant, after which several of us returned once more to Temple Bar, scene of the famous "property developers on the run" comment made from the stage as 4 of us entered the bar, dressed in jackets at the Desert Classic in 2009. That quip was made by Liam, who, with his partner Mike, has been appearing there nightly for 9 years now:

Liam's quick wit and easy manner with the customers made Temple Bar a regular late night spot for most.

Wednesday morning took us to beautiful Abama, where Dick was on duty and bought the prizes, posing with them for the camera:

The dates were abundant on the palm trees at the start:

Here's Dan and Syd waiting (again!) in their "Grupo Stewart" buggy:

Back at the hotel, we gathered again for sundowners:

Who are these shadowy characters? Perhaps I should put the flash on?:

Keith was i/c catering and took us to a slightly out of the way little steak restaurant, frequented by locals. The meat was terrific, and was served in huge helpings - especially the shoulder of lamb, which no mere mortal could have finished.

As already reported, Jas did the business at Las Americas on Thursday and we presented him with the trophy on the rooftop:

Traditionally, I get a shirt from the guys for organising the event, and here it is:

Thanks, guys - great trip.

IC XIII photo stories

2011-11-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

If you've never played at Costa Adeje, a warning - watch out for the terraces on the fairways - particularly if you're driving a buggy:

We had dinner that evening at the hotel's Las Rocas restaurant and afterwards, most of the rest of us - at least those who could still stay vertical - retired to the lounge where there was a Polynesian Evening advertised. Unfortunately, we were too late, but there was a two piece band playing, and it didn't take Dan long to get in the mood and get up on stage and dance with the singer:

On Sunday, it was off to Golf del Sur. Archie was playing at the first par 3 and thinned his tee shot - straight into, and through, the large cacti just in front of the tee. We never did find his ball, but it definitely went through the first large succulent cactus:

Monday dawned and the sun shone brightly as we made our way down to the port at Los Christianos to catch the ferry to La Gomera. Although Ian had not joined us on the first day - preferring instead to watch the Chelsea - Arsenal match - he did come along every other day, walking the courses and acting as unpaid ball-spotter. Here he is with Dick, basking in the sun as the ferry docks:

Tecina was, as usual, beautiful, and we got wonderful views of volcanic Mount Teide on the main island from virtually every hole. Syd was more concerned, however, with minimising his stats. He pushed his tee shot right at one of the par 3's and it went out of bounds in to the deepest of undergrowths. We drove up and he spotted his ball about 15 feet in and decided he could avoid a lost ball stat by fighting through the branches, aided and abetted by his playing partner:

Yes - Syd is in there somewhere!

The next hole brought about the clincher for the Wee Cup.Three of us teed off, followed by Syd, who pushed his drive right into a row of palm trees. I watched it carefully and said to Ken that it had gone into the 3rd palm along in the row, pointing to to it as I pushed my foot down on the accelerator on the buggy. We moved forward and a few seconds later Ken said "stop!". Perhaps a couple of days of Iberian Cup excesses slowed my reactions, but I didn't respond quickly enough and carried on, and then Ken's pleas became more urgent and I suddenly realised what he was on about as I heard a crunching sound underneath the buggy.

As the buggy lurched left then right, and up on to three wheels, I had a decision to make - stop, or carry on. I chose the latter option, bringing more crunching noises. Eventually the buggy came to a level spot and we stopped to survey the damage. What a mess - it was a not insubstantial tee marker I had driven over, destroying it in the process. Here's me picking up the pieces:

Not a word was said to the staff - my/our only thought was to get off the island as soon as possible, before they discovered the damage.

It had been a long day in the hot sun and some of our group struggled to keep their eyes open on the bus back to the ferry:

The drive back to San Sebastian afforded some wonderful views of the port and the big island and Mount Tiede beyond:

Dinner that evening was at a nice little Italian, organised by Malcolm. So that was day 3 - the halfway point - over. More to follow.

IC XIII photo gallery of daily winners

2011-11-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Daily winners being presented with the logo'd balls:

Jas presents Ken at Costa Adeje on day one

Peter presents to Dick at Golf del Sur on day 2

Syd awards ball to Ken at Tecina

Ken receives from Dan at Las Americas

Dick presents to Jas at Abama

Ken presents to Jas at Las Americas on the final day

IC XIII

2011-10-31T01:58:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Greetings this fine morning come to you from the front deck of the ferry to La Gomera - and the wonders of Wi-fi. Barely a cloud in the sky as we head off to play Tecina today.

Yesterday it was Golf del Sur (Norte and Sur 9's) and we were joined by one of Malcolm's friends in the car trade, who is here on holiday. Ronnie took Ian McRae's place for the day, but both of them are here in the team line-up on the first tee:

Ian walked the course, offering encouragement to his team, but it wasn't enough as the OAP's managed a 2-1 victory over the Youngsters. The match score now stands at 4-2 in favour of the Youngsters.

Individual winner on the day was Dick with 35 points, 21 of which he scored on the back nine. NP's were won by Malcolm and Dick and Syd got the longest drive (just!).

Dinner last night was at El Molino Blanco, a popular and well-kent spot. The kittymasters ensured there was no repetition of the previous night's wine excesses.

The Challenge 2011

2011-09-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was the 8th year of playing The Challenge and, after much juggling of the teams, we finally managed four men's teams and one ladies' for what promised to be a much closer match than previous years. The weather held fair and most of us gathered in the clubhouse early on for bacon butties and to watch the start of the Scotland - Argentina World Cup match.

The English Nationalists were out in full force, flying their flags:

Debutant Geordie Ziegler (USA), Jack Simpson & Syd Freeman admire Syd's handiwork with his car

Rob Pollard waves the flags

The first team out on the 1st tee:

Ian Sharp, Raymond Orr (Africa), Gary Grant & Syd Freeman

Les Gray, Ian Stewart, Hugh Riches & Rob Pollard

(The rest of the team photographs were taken by Rob and no doubt he will let us see them soon).

Our group all hit good tee shots at the Doo'cot:

Hugh surrounded by balls - mine furthest left (2), Hugh's (2), Rob's (2), and, behind Hugh, Les' ball (lipped out!)

Very nearly a full house of birdies - Les will tell you he was the unlucky one, lipping out.

The buzz going round the course was that a shock result was on the cards and it could be a first ever defeat for Scotland, and so it was to prove - but, unlike our rugby team, we didn't even come close! Here's the match scores:

Grant & Sharp lost by 3 holes to Freeman & Orr
Stewart & Gray (L) lost by 1 hole to Pollard & Riches (H)
Taylor & Gray (K) lost by 6 holes to defector Page & Meaden (J)
Corbett & Simpson lost by 2 holes to Fulford (S) & Ziegler
Riches (J) & Wilson tied with Fulford (J) & Meaden (A)

So, 0-12 was the score - not even one match did Scotland win - there could be changes next year!

Keith tried to take the photo of the trophy presentation, but the light behind Rob and I made it very difficult:

I made a bit of a cod of the winning team photo as well:

John Meaden, Rob Pollard, Hugh Riches, Janice Fulford, Anna Meaden, Ken Page & Steve Fulford. Missing from winning RoW photo are Syd Freeman, Raymond Orr & Geordie Ziegler.

Another great end of season event - roll on next year.

Summer Quaich 2011

2011-09-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It's only a week since we had our final night of the 2011 Quaich but already it seems like a long time ago. I did promise/threaten further analysis of the stats etc for this season, so here goes:

Twenty three players put in a score this year, but Ian Dring and Gordon Moir weren't amongst them, with both being geographically challenged this summer. Dave Edwards also couldn't play.
Total points scored in 233 rounds entered on the database was 7,787 - an average of 33.4. There were, however, a few more scores from our group on Quaich days that didn't make it all the way to the database!
Steve Fulford had the widest range of scores - from a lowly 11 to 41.
Gary Grant only played 3 times, but was very consistent, only scoring 34 or 35 points. John McWhinnie, Jas Bhagrath and Harry Salter played a little bit more often and kept their range of scores down to 6,7,and 6 respectively, but Nigel Meany only played twice and scored 37 points on each occasion.
Naturally, Nigel's average score is the highest, but Jas is next best on 36.8, with Harry and John McW next. Of course, all of these players didn't have any truncated or foreshortened rounds to bring their averages down. I was best of those who played more than 10 rounds, with an average of 35.4 for all rounds played.
There were 22 forty-pointers this year, with Dan and I top of the tree with 4 each. Then came Messrs Sharp & Pollard with 3 each, Fulford, Simpson and Meaden with 2, and Riches and Taylor one apiece.
Even allowing for the usual creative transfers of Messrs Cook and Orr to the Rest of the World team, Scots dominated the Quaich in every sense this year, being responsible for two-thirds of the rounds played and also the top three scorers. Only once (23rd June) were the Scots outnumbered (3-2).
On the other hand, the numbers of over 60's only fractionally exceeded their younger counterparts, but they scored more points on aggregate over the whole season, and also on a weekly basis (12 of the 23 weeks).
The season's highest score was 43 points, shared by Messrs Pollard and Meaden.
The best gross score was 74 and this was shared between me, Ian Sharp and Gary Grant.
The lowest recorded score was the 11 points Steve recorded on 29th June.
The lowest weekly winning score was Jack's 31 points on the same day, when a number of us were "midged" off!
Conversely, the highest DoD score was 32 points - an all-time record, achieved by me on 13th April.

That's this year's stats - historical comparison to follow.

B.o.G. LII - day 2

2011-09-06T04:25:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Breakfast on Monday morning was lovely - but then the troubles began. I referred in my earlier post to admin cock-ups - the first was pretty serious and could have been disastrous. I wasn't sure exactly what our tee time was on Monday morning so I checked with the hotel reception - all the bookings are made through the Grant Arms. Their golf girl (Heather) wasn't there, but the receptionist checked the correspondence for me and said it was a 10 am start.

Virtually all of us had breakfasted by just after 8 am anyway, so there appeared to be absolutely no rush, but most of us set off for Boat of Garten before 9 am anyway. On the way, I got a slightly frantic call from Harry, who said that he was at the club and did we realise our first tee time was 9:12 am? On arrival, I immediately went to the pro shop as I felt sure they had made a mistake - after all, we had just checked at the hotel and they had confirmed a 10 am start. No mistake, said the pro - you've all got to be off the tee by 9:30 am latest as they have other groups booked on after us.

There was a short tete-a-tete but, with time marching on, the only realistic thing to do was to rush everyone on to the first tee. There had to be a little bit of shuffling of the groups, but, by and large, we managed - with one exception - the leader, Jas. He, like everyone else, had been told by the hotel, that it was a 10 am start, and, having had a heavy night swapping whiskies with a couple of bankers - and Ken - until 1 am, Jas made the most of the sleep time he thought was available. He was last seen by one of our group appearing for breakfast at 8:55 am, so it was no surprise that he didn't get to the golf course until almost 9:45 am - by which time, we in the last group were halfway up the 2nd fairway.

Not the best of starts for Jas - he did try and play the 2nd hole but duffed his drive, so his first two holes were blanks and he was now no longer the leader. He made a fair fist of things thereafter, however, and finished on 28 points on the day and a respectable 2 day aggregate of 65 points - good enough for 4th place overall in the end.

The overnight and early morning heavy rain had certainly dampened down the course - and it stopped just in time for our start. It was pretty wet wading through the rough however - as we often had to do - and shorts were a better option than getting trousers soaked - Keith and Ian had the sense to do this, but I didn't have time to change, scurrying around trying to get everyone away in time:

The winner on the day - by a country mile, and with one of the best scores recorded in recent times - was Harry, with 41 points. Les got 40 points at the Boat 3 years ago, and Syd has been close to this a couple of times since, but Harry's score yesterday was terrific - a gross 75 - no birdies, 13 pars and 5 bogeys. Of course, he also won the Longest Drive at the 18th as well - again by a country mile.

Peter got Nearest the Pin at the 9th - after a close measure with Jas - but Jas was the only one to hit the green at the 16th hole - nobody had managed at the 3rd and it was carried forward.

The team prizes went to Dan, Malcolm, Ken and Bill, who, amazingly, all scored more than 30 points, so their best three stableford points total was 123, beating the other two teams by some distance (109 & 95).

Next best individual Monday score was Malcolm, with 36 points, which was more than enough to give him the trophy with an aggregate score of 69 points - and, remember, he had voluntarily deducted 2 points from his Grantown score after his indiscretion in the hazard at the 9th. This was Malcolm's 4th win, levelling with me in 5th place overall in the all-time stakes. It took Malcolm 17 years and 34 attempts to win his first BoG in September 2002, but he, like Syd, is making up for all those early disappointments now.

Malcolm also, of course, won the scratch event with 53 points, with me next best on 46.

Bill Whyman got second place overall with a total of 67 points, and I was 3rd one point further behind. All the stats will be published on the Yahoo site shortly.

Malcolm did the honours at the Boat Inn, Aboyne afterwards - and made reference in his acceptance speech to the unfortunate circumstances whereby defending champion Syd had to miss out this time. We got to the pub somewhat earlier than usual due to the second of the admin cock-ups - no lunch had been booked at the golf club! I had thought that this was all pre-arranged by the hotel, but apparently we are supposed to do this ourselves. Mea culpa.

Here's Malcolm receiving his trophy - and the team photo taken outside the clubhouse just as the rain started again:

Looks like Malcolm will be organising the same Grantown/BoG package again next May - get the dates in your diary now - Sunday/Monday 13th/14th May, 2012.

B.o.G. LII - day one

2011-09-06T02:02:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Our 52nd official outing to Boat of Garten went pretty well - apart from a couple of admin cock-ups. Circumstances dictated that the current trophy holder, Syd, couldn't be there to defend his title, but he had done much of the admin months before and I picked up the reins in the last couple of weeks. More of that later, but Sunday at Grantown was a glorious afternoon and several of us took the opportunity to don shorts.

There was a large outing in front of us, and, although they had over half an hour's start on us, we had caught up with them after 6 holes, so we had no option but to sit and wait at the 7th tee:

Our group was first out, and I was able to walk back to the road to photograph the second group putting out on the 6th green:

Last group out didn't seem to be talking to each other as they marched away from the 3rd tee:

Again we were waiting on the 9th tee, but we didn't care with such glorious views:

Malcolm hit a poor drive at this hole, pushing his ball right in to the water hazard. He could see his ball, however, and decided to play it, and he hit a terrific chip on to the green, then holed the putt for what we initially thought was an amazing birdie three. However, he had transgressed under what many now know as the "Brian Davis" rule, swishing some of the long grasses in the hazard on his practice swings. Initially, it was called as a one shot penalty, but Malcolm wasn't satisfied and checked with the pro afterwards, who handed him a rule book and told him it should be a 2 shot penalty, so there was a retrospective adjustment to Malcolm's points total, and what could have been 35 points was voluntarily reduced to 33. He should have won a special "integrity" prize!

Scoring was generally pretty good - the individual winner on the day was back-to-form Jas, who scored 37 points - one better than both Keith and I, with Ian McRae one further point behind. This four would therefore be playing together, last out, on Monday morning at Boat of Garten.

We all failed to hit the green at the tricky 8th so the first Nearest the Pin prize was carried forward to the 11th hole, but again, nobody managed to win a prize. The Longest Drive was won by me at the 12th hole, and the second Nearest the Pin prize was won by Keith at the short 16th.

Jas, Keith, Bill and Dick won the team prize with a best 3 stableford points total of 117 - eleven and twelve points respectively ahead of the other two teams.

Les didn't feel too well after his round and said he would have to go home, so the call went out for Harry to drive over on Monday morning and make up the full complement of 12 once more.

We had a swift drink in the clubhouse, but then left to check in at the Grant Arms Hotel, with most of us then taking the short stroll down to the Ben Mhor Hotel for a couple of excellent pints of Trade Winds and Wildcat.

Incidentally, apparently one of perks for taking over the admin from Syd was that I ended up in room 12, complete with four poster bed!:

Dinner was very good - and, yet again, the wine consumption was down - only 6 bottles consumed amongst 11 of us - my, how things have changed over the years. Of course, we did have a couple of pints and some G & T's beforehand - it's traditional after all!

Terry Edmonds' Memorial

2011-09-04T00:25:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Friday afternoon was the 10th time that we played for the lovely trophy donated by Linda Edmonds. We were rained off at our first attempt in 2002 (and again in 2009), but there were no such problems this year. Aboyne was again in great condition and the weather was fair enough for a couple of us to don shorts.

There was an excellent turnout of 15 golfers and young Paul Edmonds was in the first group out with last year's champion, Malcolm Grigor. There had been a bit of a wait due to a large, shotgun start, outing, but eventually we got going about half an hour later than our scheduled 1:30 pm start.

Paul hadn't played golf since the same time last year, but he demonstrated natural timing and ability on the first tee - albeit it wasn't his best shot of the day:

Meanwhile the golf groupies looked on:

Individual winner on the day was Les, with 36 points - the second time he gets his name on the trophy, levelling with Malcolm. Dan and I both had 35 points, with Dan the better inward half and hence second place. Linda kindly donated and handed out the prizes - and some kisses and cuddles.

Winning team with a best 2 stableford points was Les, Ray and Bill with 80 points - one ahead of Nigel, Ian and I. Here's the team gathered before our meal:

Another excellent day out - and a well established event in the calendar now - don't miss it next year!

Q21

2011-08-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Greetings this week from Newport Coast, SoCal - surfing country. A lot cooler down here so have managed to get out twice for 9 holes with my grandson and son-in-law at the lovely little course at Aliso Creek - http://www.alisocreekinn.com/default.aspx?pg=golf. It's short - ideal practice for an 11 year old who's learning the game - but, off the blue tees, the four par 3's are amongst the toughest I've played anywhere, so it was fun for us too. The course meanders through a canyon - if your ball strays off the fairway, you leave it - the rough is just wild and the rattlesnakes are sufficient deterrent. Here I am waiting at the first:

The database has been updated - and Rob's calculations were correct - although I'm not quite sure why he couldn't figure out the dropping scores for everyone - they're all there in descending order on the "Top 10 order" tab. Anyway here's the details:

Stewart, Ian 391 (37)
Sharp, Ian 385 (36)
Corbett, Daniel 384 (34)
Pollard, Rob 378 (34)
Simpson, Jack 372 (32)
Taylor, Dick 355 (33)
Riches, Hugh 335 (29)
Gray, Keith 332 (30)
Meaden, John 323 (25)
McRae, Ian 316 (29)

So, it's all to play for in the last 2 weeks - looking forward to it - it will be great to play 18 holes - hope the weather behaves when I get back. Given the scores to drop, there's effectively only a 4 point gap for Ian to make up in the next 2 weeks, and Dan still has low scores of 34 and 35, so his current 7 point shortfall can be closed very quickly. Rob has a bit more work to do with an effective gap of 10 points.

Q20

2011-08-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Greetings yet again from Oregon. We're leaving the inland heat of Grants Pass tomorrow and heading 800 miles south to the distinctly cooler climes of Newport Coast, Southern California, where it's only in the 70's. I'm sure we'll cope.

A lot of food and drink has been consumed but virtually no exercise - too hot to be bothered. All I've managed was 9 holes at Grants Pass on Wednesday - beautiful greens - should prepare me well for golf in Banchory on my return (not). Our son-in-law was working but I met up and played with a guy on vacation from Vancouver and it transpired he was a Glaswegian - albeit over 40 years ago. Here I am in front of the clubhouse:

The database has been updated and is on the Yahoo site, but, for ease of reference, here's the top 10, with scores to drop in brackets:

Stewart, Ian 391 (37)
Sharp, Ian 385 (36)
Corbett, Daniel 377 (34)
Pollard, Rob 374 (34)
Simpson, Jack 371 (31)
Taylor, Dick 351 (32)
Gray, Keith 332 (30)
Riches, Hugh 329 (28)
McRae, Ian 311 (29)
Meaden, John 289

Ian has made good use of my absence and has closed the gap at the top to just 6 points. A score of 42 points next Wednesday will bring his Top 10 score level with mine. I obviously need to get back soon - but not next week. Enjoy.

Q17

2011-07-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Rob for actually remembering the scores this week. Database now updated and posted on the Yahoo site, but here's the Top 10, with dropping scores in brackets:

Stewart, Ian 387 (34)
Sharp, Ian 376 (33)
Corbett, Daniel 371 (31)
Pollard, Rob 369 (34)
Simpson, Jack 358 (31)
Taylor, Dick 340 (31)
Riches, Hugh 320 (28)
Gray, Keith 316 (24)
McRae, Ian 305 (27)
Meaden, John 232

Courtesy of a lower dropping score, Ian closed the gap at the top by one point this week. There are just 6 weeks left this season now - and I'll only manage to play in a maximum of 3 of them. My current Top 10 score of 387 is already greater than the winner's total from each of the last 3 years, but another couple of 40 pointers from Ian would easily see him jump up to first place. Likewise, Rob, and, if Jack keeps up his late season surge, he could definitely be a contender too, particularly given the number of relatively low scores he still has to drop off.

It was Jack's 3rd win of the season and his second consecutive 40-pointer. In fact, it was also the second week in a row that our group had three 40-pointers, and our total for the season now stands at 16 - the same as last year's final figure - with what is normally the best scoring time of the year still to come.

Recent attendances have been much better too, and, if we keep this up, we won't be all that far behind last year's total too.

I'll close with evidence of last night's unique feat of a double wedding cake from my playing partners:

Q16

2011-07-14T04:17:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

No thanks to Rob, I've managed to update the database with yesterday's 13 scores. For the record, they were:

Pollard, Rob 43
Simpson, Jack 40
Fulford, Steve 40
Stewart, Ian 38
Sharp, Ian 37
McWhinnie, John 37
Corbett, Daniel 35
Taylor, Dick 35
Gray, Keith 35
Riches, Hugh 30
McRae, Ian 30
Gray, Les 30
Cook, Archie 27

Rob's terrific score of 43 points was the best of this season - so far. It was Rob's 2nd win of 2011, whereas it was Archie's first DoD since July last year.

Scoring was pretty good, with three 40 pointers - the best of the season so far, taking the total for 2011 up to 13, which is now ahead of the running rate for the last couple of years.

Just 7 weeks left to go in this year's Quaich (but only 4 for me), and the Top 10 from the Leader Board, with dropping scores in brackets, now looks like:

Stewart, Ian 380 (34)
Sharp, Ian 368 (32)
Pollard, Rob 364 (33)
Corbett, Daniel 363 (31)
Simpson, Jack 347 (31)
Taylor, Dick 331 (30)
Riches, Hugh 309 (23)
McRae, Ian 300 (27)
Gray, Keith 284
Meaden, John 205

Full details already posted on the Yahoo site.

As Rob said, it was a glorious evening, but shadows are beginning to lengthen:

and here's one of Master Blaster Simpson, the Albatross Man, in action:

Summer Tour - final day

2011-07-12T05:44:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Firstly, here's the photo of the escape committee enjoying a couple of post-match pints of Cast Iron in the garden at the Traveller's Rest on Sunday afternoon:

Monday morning was another bright one as we entered the final lap. There was a big Audi sponsored event on after our 8:30 am start, and the hoardings were up on the 1st tee as the second group out posed for what they assumed would be the shot of today's winners - they were right, as it happened!:

It was John Taylor's 69th birthday today and he didn't disappoint - he played like a pro and finished worthy winner of Monday's logo'd golf ball with 35 points. I got the first nearest the pin, and Keith got the second one. For the 3rd day in a row, John Davies won the longest drive - although this time it took a measure, some use of technology and an independent adjudicator before JD was deemed to be just past his fellow big hitting partner, JT.

So to the outcome of the overall event - the threatened final day shoot-out between Rob and I never really materialised. The real Rob of the previous two days never showed up, and, as it transpired, I did more than enough with my relatively modest score of 31 points to take the trophy by a clear 7 points with a total of 93 points from 3 rounds. Rob was second, and John T's superb final round took him to a total of 85 points and 3rd place overall. Last year's champ presented me with the trophy:

It was great to see JT back in the fold again, in this, the 13th year of the Summer Tour, which started in Ayr in 1999. John is the 21st player to have taken part over the years, and Slaley Hall is the only venue we've been to more than once - in fact, this was our 3rd visit there. The venue for next year has yet to be decided - we'll wait until the autumn deals come in before deciding where to go in 2012.

Jas is now the only person to have attended in all of 13 years. The winners of the first 2 events in Ayr and the Highlands, are lost in the mists of time, but this is the 4th time I've won the event since 2001. Peter and John D have both won it twice each, and Syd, Dave and Jas are the other winners.

The Summer Tour is now a well established and well attended event, with an average of 12 playing since the trophy was donated by Bob Cooper in 2004. We hope to have at least that many next year - all welcome.

Summer Tour - day 2

2011-07-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

A much better day yesterday as we played the Priestman course, which was in good shape this year after last year's extensive work on bunkers etc.

Winner on the day was me, with 35 points, just beating Rob, who was one point less. John D. picked up a nearest the pin prize and the longest drive, and John T got the other nearest the pin.

This morning has started sunny and we're back on the Hunting course. Leader by one point is me, on 62 points. Rob follows, then Archie on 56.

Yesterday afternoon, the escape committee formed and we headed to the nearby Travellers Rest for some fine ales - photo to follow.

Summer Tour

2011-07-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was a rain affected first round of this year's Summer Tour on our return to Slaley Hall, and this was reflected in the poor scoring. Rob was Saturday's winner with 27 points (on countback from me), and Keith got one of the nearest the pins and John D the longest drive. Winning team (best 2 from 4) were John D, Jas, Ian and I with just 69 points.

It was the return of the one and only John Taylor and he was in great form as usual - here he is:

RP - the new look

2011-07-08T02:02:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

El Quaich Supremo has been beardless for a couple of weeks but has neglected to let the rest of the world see his new look, so I decided to take the initiative and grab some photos. He was purposely trying to hide from my camera by using his pint as a shield for a while:

but I got him in the end:

Beardless, but not chinless - welcome to the new Rob!

St. Andrews

2011-07-05T03:10:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We all enjoyed the return of the Fife outing last year, when, after a few years' absence, we decided to play the Eden course, and we enjoyed it so much then that we decided to return there yesterday.

It was an absolutely glorious day, but we noticed the tide in the basin was well out before the start, which could only mean it would soon be on its way back in, and, with it, the wind, which built up steadily as the round went on. Here's our band of 8 at the start:

I was in the 2nd group with Peter, Les and Ken and it was very soon apparent that Les was having a bad swing day, and Ken, as usual, had been skipping his PMA classes again. Here's the first of Ken's lost balls from the short 4th hole tee:

Yes, you've guessed - it went right!

Next up was Les - on video this time:

This one headed left towards the gorse. Note Ken stepping up to play his "provo"!

Two holes later and this time the estuary is on our left, but Ken's ball was like a magnet again. Here he is climbing back up from the beach after a vain attempt to recover his ball:

Next hole, it's Les' turn - his balls were attracted to gorse - note the look of horror and disbelief:

We got there in the end, but I'm sure you've gathered by now that we didn't win the team competition! Harry, Dick, Keith and Bill had a best 3 stableford points at each hole total of 117 - 10 more than us.

Harry also got the nearest the pin at the 5th and the longest drive at the 16th, but Ken stole his clean sweep with a superb 4 iron in to the wind at the 15th to claim the other NP prize.

Best individual score on the day was me (again!) with 40 points, with Bill next best on 37, and Harry 3rd on 35. Regrettably, the Fife outing is not currently one of the 12 counting events in our Order of Merit - something we might put right next year.

We had some fine ales and did the prize-giving in Whey Pat afterwards:

(Photo courtesy of Jenny).

We then walked round to the Balaka for a curry before driving home. An excellent afternoon/early evening out.

Q14

2011-06-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Yes - hard to believe it's Q14 already - just 9 weeks left now (and I'm on holiday for 3 of them). It was a really strange evening last night. With the Club championship in full swing, the tee was fully booked up to 6:30 pm, so it was going to be a late one for most of us - although at least we could play the much talked about friendly fourballs. Some of the retirees chose not to wait this long, however, and decided to play amongst themselves, teeing off in the early afternoon. It transpired that they caught some heavy showers and curtailed their rounds - Jack went in to the clubhouse before the Quaichers teed off to check the scores from these Early Birds and came out with a big grin on his face saying "it's all to play for - they didn't finish!"

The 8 of us who did play ball in a bag fourballs did get some showers too, but it was coming straight down and it was never quite wet enough for that to be a real reason to quit - certainly not if we had been playing a medal, or, heaven forbid, the club championship. However, the warm, still, damp air was ideal territory for that scourge of Scotland - the midge. It was, as usual, worst at the 12th tee where they seemed to be swarming everywhere. That - plus the fact that nobody was playing particularly well, and it was getting late and some dark clouds seemed to be approaching - brought my playing partners to the swift conclusion that we should walk in. I did protest and said I wanted to carry on, but it wasn't really from the heart, and, in the end, Ken P, Ian Sh, Steve and I trooped in. It was only 9 pm.

The fourball behind us didn't notice we had walked in and they carried on playing - wondering where we had got to. They got round to the Doo'cot and, as luck would have it, another shower came on and this time it was a little heavier, so Hugh, Ian McR and Ken B trooped off, with a disconsolate Jack trudging forlornly behind them, miffed that he had nobody to play on with.

Thus it transpired that nobody completed 18 holes - and I think it should go down in history as the first ever Quaich that was "midged off"! So, it's time to resurrect that old category:

Yes - step forward Messrs Gray, Gray, Cook, Bhagrath, Taylor, Corbett, Sharp, Page, Fulford, Black, Riches, McRae, Simpson - and, yes, Stewart - you all earned your BGB's yesterday!

We fully expected to find a list of scores from the Early Birds in the bar, together with some kitty monies, but there were none, so, what could have been the biggest Quaich attendance of the season, turned out to be only 8 and here are the scores:

Simpson, Jack 31
McRae, Ian 27
Riches, Hugh 23
Page, Ken 21
Stewart, Ian 20
Black, Ken 20
Sharp, Ian 17
Fulford, Steve 11

The lower four only played 11/12 holes, whilst the top four played 16. So it ended up with the same Hero and Zero as last week, although Steve will be a little miffed, as we had discussed awarding a joint DoD to the Early Birds who each apparently scored zero!

It fell on me to award the prize ball to Jack:

When discussing Jack's victory, the words "hollow" and "Pyrrhic" were being bandied about - and it is certainly the lowest winning score this season - and possibly ever.

Obviously, no change in the leader board with all contenders recording a dropping score only. Next week, the course is closed all afternoon prior to the next round of the club championship, but I notice Rob (who's away just now) has booked 3 times from 18:37 for another ball in the bag treat - let's hope for better things this time. Please let Rob know if you want a game next week (I'd like to play, Rob).

Balmoral

2011-06-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We headed westwards last evening through thundering downpours with inches of standing water on the roads, and with our hearts full of gloom at the prospect of potentially missing out on one of our favourite outings in our extensive golf calendar. We all reckoned that Jas, an ever-present at this event until now, was doing a rain dance on his way back from London to make sure he didn't miss out after all.

Oh we of little faith - by the time we got to Balmoral, the rain had stopped - in fact, there wasn't that much evidence of there having been much rainfall down that way at all. We had fully expected that the best we could possibly get would be 9 holes on rain-sodden fairways, but it was much better than that - we managed 18 holes in the dry and barely got our boots muddy. It was, however, ideal conditions for that traditional pest, the midge - damp and still - but even here we were pleasantly surprised at how little they bothered us - normally I get eaten alive at the slightest sign of the dreaded bug, but I didn't get one single bite last night.

So, it fell to Ken Black to step in to Jas' shoes and make his debut in this, the 11th year of the event. Gary Coutts was joined, as usual by Norrie Thain, and the two of them signed the rest of us on. Gary didn't make the best of starts, duffing his tee shot at the 1st. Here he is, just in front of the tee, as Malcolm walks back to look for spare scorecards:

The next group out had a little more time on their hands to compose themselves for a team photo:

After the round, back in the clubhouse, and in the midst of our self-catering feast, we posed for a team photo of all eight of us:

Apart from Gary of course, the only ever-presents now are Bill and I - although Bill blotted his otherwise perfect attendance card a bit last night when he had to retire hurt at the halfway point.

Winner on the night was Gary with 37 points - his first win since 2003. Gary's score included three birdies in a row. Malcolm was 2nd with 35 points, just beating me on countback.

Dick got the longest drive - in fact, only he and I hit the fairway at the 16th hole. Malcolm picked up nearest the pin at the 11th, and Dick was initially awarded the prize at the 5th hole. He 'fessed up later however, once he had been presented with his prize - he had played off the yellow tees, which were just one yard in front of the white tees we were supposed to be playing off - and gave the ball to Ken, who had been just outside where Dick had landed.

So another wonderful sociable evening, with drink flowing freely - mostly down Gary's neck, judging by his speech afterwards. It was midnight and time to go home - Gary would be back up on the hills of the Royal estate in just over 3 hours' time!

Midsummer outing

2011-06-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

After Thursday's soaking in Q13, and with heavy showers and dark clouds swarming round Deeside, we wondered whether it might be a case of Midsummer Madness as we headed west to Ballater. In the event, we needn't have worried - the afternoon was delightful and, barring a couple of very brief light showers, the Midsummer Outing was played in ideal conditions in beautiful surroundings, on a course in excellent condition. The most immediate contrast from Banchory was the obvious springiness in the fairways, but I guess that's at least partly due to the relative volume of traffic.

We had 2 enforced late withdrawals - for differing and unavoidable reasons, both Malcolm and Les had to pull out. This spoiled the previously perfect symmetry of the event, which had been looking like three fourballs, so we had to quickly re-think the team competition. Originally this was to be the best 3 stableford scores at each hole, but we had to cut this back to the best 2 at each hole, but this still left the one remaining 4 man team with a huge advantage.

Prizes on the day went mostly to me - I got both nearest the pins and also won the individual stableford, and, with the two Kens as partners, very nearly won the team competition too. Dick got the longest drive and also individual 2nd place, whilst Ken P was 3rd.

The team scores were very close - the first team out (Dick, Jack & Ian McR) scored 82 points, whilst me and the Kens shot one better. We fully expected these scores would be trounced out of sight by the third team of Harry, Archie, Rob and Peter, but, in the end, they only managed to beat us by one point, despite having the extra man. There was much muttering about factoring their score by one quarter, but retrospective rule changing would not have gone down well, and we just left the scores as they were.

Ballater was excellent, and whilst we enjoyed last year's Midsummer Outing at Edzell, we all agreed (I think!) that the premium of £15 per head charged at Edzell wasn't worth it, and Ballater was, overall, a better experience.

Here's the individual scores:

Stewart, Ian 39
Taylor, Dick 38
Page, Ken 36
Cook, Archie 34
McRae, Ian 33
Salter, Harry 32
Simpson, Jack 31
Black, Ken 30
Street, Peter 30
Pollard, Rob 26

The teams, in order of play:

Summer Quaich

2011-06-25T03:30:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Rob failed his technology test this week, but fortunately I had my camera with me on Thursday night before the SGM, as a rain-soaked Steve handed the winner's ball to Jack:

The photo shows Thursday's hero and zero - it was Jack's first win this season and Steve's first DoD for 4 years - welcome back to the UK, Steve!

Full results already published on the Yahoo site, but here's the quick fix top 10 - for those who have completed 10 rounds, the next score to drop is shown in parentheses:

Stewart, Ian 369 (32)
Sharp, Ian 360 (29)
Corbett, Daniel 355 (27)
Pollard, Rob 347 (29)
Taylor, Dick 320 (25)
Simpson, Jack 294
McRae, Ian 258
Riches, Hugh 256
Gray, Keith 249
Meaden, John 205

As already commented on, attendances are well down this season. There's many theories about why this should be, but next Wednesday is a non-medal week, and whilst the start time is a little later than many would like, at least we have the opportunity for ball in the bag friendly fourballs - but only if enough show up to play. Hopefully we'll have a good turnout - let Rob know if you can make it.

Archive photos

2011-06-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Trawling through some old photo albums last night, I came across a few that I had previously thought had gone missing.

First of all, probably from a Boxing Day golf outing a couple of decades ago:

Dick Taylor, Ian Stewart, Keith Gray, Brian Fitzpatrick & Sally Miller

With our Midsummer outing approaching next week, it brought to mind the Midnight golf we used to play at this time. It was a bit of a drunken affair, but this photo was, I think, taken at a similar event run by the golf club a few years after we had stopped organising our own event - note display of light sticks:

Ian Stewart, Jas Bhagrath, Dick Taylor & Bill Miller

The last one is completely random. Seeing Hugh playing in his long shorts last night, this demonstrates how fashions have changed over the years - do you think I would get away with wearing shorts like this now?:

Me on 10th tee at Boat of Garten

Blairgowrie

2011-06-11T08:36:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Numbers were down a bit this year but it was still a wonderful day out at Blairgowrie yesterday. Weather conditions were ideal and the threatened heavy showers thankfully never happened. I had to go in to work first thing so missed out again on the morning fun round on the Wee course, but I was there in good time for lunch and to join the group as we lined up for the team photo on the 1st tee at the Lansdowne course:

I was the individual winner on the day with 38 points, with Keith next best on 35, then Les with 33. Les also got the Longest Drive and Archie and Dan the Nearest the Pins. There was some discussion about whether the team prize was for the best 2, or all 3, scores, but, in the end, Peter decided it would be all three - and, in so doing, did himself out of a prize! Les, Keith and Bill's aggregate score took the honours.

The prizegiving presentation was held at our dinner table and initially I smiled for the camera, but was then told not to as it was on my gap tooth side - too grisly a sight for some - so we tried again, with mouth tightly shut this time round:

Thanks to Peter for organising - a great day out.

Damaged green at Banchory

2011-05-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We were all a little horrified this morning when we saw the state of the 11th green - it looks like it's been vandalised by a diesel spill and something burning:

Apart from that, we had a pleasant morning - here's Jack, Ian and Syd waiting on the 12th tee, in front of Helen's Hut, which was in use for the first time yesterday during the Sponsored Tournament:

Aboyne

2011-05-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Seven of us turned up this afternoon to take up Syd's invitation to play Aboyne. Three Aboyne members - Syd, Malcolm and Bill Whyman - were joined by Peter, Dick, Dan and I.

We had a super afternoon - the course looks fantastic - barely a blemish - and the greens were excellent. Much discussion in the Boat Inn afterwards about the comparison in standards of the Deeside courses.

Dick was best on the day with 37 points, followed by me with 34 and a gaggle on 32. No prizes, no photos, but some excellent Trade Winds as we watched the model trains chug round the rail at the top of the lounge.

Q8

2011-05-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

First of all, a complaint - why am I still doing a match report 2 years after I retired as El Supremo of the Quaich? Do I think Mr. Pollard is skimping on his duties with such short match reports and lack of photographs? - Yes, I do. Rob forgot his camera again last night and his match report was perfunctory to say the least. Interim report card reads "must try harder".

Anyway to business - here's the mandatory prizegiving photo - last week's winner, Archie wasn't around, so Dan did the honours and presented the ball (a little reluctantly it appears) to me:

It wasn't quite a record low winning score, but it was the lowest so far this season, just beating Archie's 35 points in Q1. Dan, himself, also won with 34 points 2 years ago, but you have to go back to 2003 for the all-time recorded low of 33 points (Rob).

It was also a very narrow spread of scores last night - just 5 points separated my winning score from Rob's DoD. In fact, my score last night was only 2 points more than my (record high) DoD score a few weeks ago.

So, I'm now the first person to have 3 wins this season (plus a DoD); I also have the (equal) highest points total (40) and the best gross (75) so far, not to mention the highest ever recorded DoD score. Are there any more records for me to break in the weeks to come?

The other notable stat this season is the attendance levels, which are 25% - 30% down on previous norms. We've had 19 people putting a score in so far, so, although we've lost a regular in Ian Dring, and Les Gray has been in Portugal a bit longer than usual, it's not lack of personnel, it's just that a number of people seem to be playing less now. Former regulars whose attendances are less than this time last year are Ken Black, Archie Cook, Gary Grant, John McWhinnie, John Meaden and Gordon Moir. All for differing reasons - mostly work related, although the Seniors matches on Wednesdays have also had an impact.

Anyway, that's about it from me this week - I hope to return to my role merely as keeper of the database next week. The full stats are already published at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/Summer%20Quaich%202011.xls, but here's the short version top 10, with appearances to date in brackets:

Stewart, Ian 245 (7)
Taylor, Dick 217 (7)
Corbett, Daniel 211 (6)
Sharp, Ian 204 (6)
Pollard, Rob 168 (5)
Riches, Hugh 157 (5)
Gray, Keith 147 (5)
McRae, Ian 147 (5)
Simpson, Jack 146 (5)
Cook, Archie 144 (4)

B.o.G. 51 - the Main Event

2011-05-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Slightly controversially, and, in a break with long established tradition, the leaders went out first on Monday morning. Surprisingly, this move was apparently instigated by those at the lower end of yesterday's scoring, who felt they didn't want to hold up the leaders - well, certainly not Syd, anyway!

It was a fine bright morning and Bill, Ian and I all donned shorts for the morning round at Boat of Garten. Here's a loose aggregation of bodies gathering round the first tee:

I had the luck/foresight to take a shot of Malcolm teeing off at the 6th hole - The Avenue, stroke index 1 - and he didn't disappoint, unleashing a mighty drive down the middle, which I measured at 275 yards:

Yes - and before you ask, Malcolm did get his 6 OK!

At the 10th hole, Peter set his trolley off towards the 11th tee as he headed off to the green. On and on it rumbled until it demolished one of the signs:

I made a bad start to my round and was but a mere spectator as Syd, Malcolm and Peter battled it out for the trophy. Syd was always ahead, but Malcolm was keeping him in sight in case of error, and Peter was a constant danger - especially with all the strokes he had, as Syd kept commenting.

Peter birdied the 15th and then Malcolm chipped in for an unlikely 2 at the 16th - just after Syd had had back to back bogeys - and when we stood on the 17th tee, Malcolm calculated that Syd was just 2 points ahead of Peter, with Malcolm a further 2 points behind.

Peter had a relatively short putt at the 17th to apparently narrow the gap to just one point, but just missed it, but then he sliced his drive at the 18th and got into some trouble from which he never recovered. Malcolm boomed out another monster drive - which turned out to be the Longest Drive - but Syd kept his nerve to get his four, despite finding the greenside bunker, and, despite also getting his par, Malcolm had to settle for 2nd place overall.

It transpired that Malcolm's arithmetic was slightly suspect and he had been a lot closer to Syd than he had given himself credit for - or, perhaps, was willing to admit. The final scores on Monday were:

Freeman 37
Grigor 37
Street 35
Taylor 31
Bhagrath 30
Corbett 29
Cook 28
Stewart 27
Simpson 27
McRae 25
Gray K 25
Whyman 24

Nearest the Pins were won by Syd and Dick, and the team prize went to the leading four of Freeman, Grigor, Street and Stewart.

The overall winner of the 51st staging of the event since the trophy was introduced in 1986 - but only the 50th winner (one rained off) - was Syd, for the 9th time. It took him until his retirement in 1999 to pick up his first win, but since then, he's won it on more than one-third of the times that we've played it - 9 out of the last 25.

Here's the final positions:

Freeman 76
Grigor 74
Street 71
Corbett 65
Stewart 63
Cook 60
Taylor 58
Whyman 58
Gray K 56
Bhagrath 54
McRae 51
Simpson 46

Naturally, Syd took the Gross prize too, with 64 points, followed by Malcolm with 56, and me with 43. Full details already posted on the Yahoo site.

All that was left to do then was for Keith to present the trophy to Syd, and for Syd, in return, to invite us all back to the Boat Inn, Aboyne for the celebratory pint:

KAG presents trophy to Syd, whilst Dick apparently dozes in the background.

Syd will be in touch shortly with September's arrangements, but the 52nd official outing will be held on Sunday/Monday 4th/5th September, 2011 - all welcome - the more, the merrier. Get the date in your diaries now.

Just when exactly does Syd get too old to keep winning? He's 72 now and apparently getting better than ever. He now holds the Iberian Cup, Desert Classic and Boat of Garten trophies - the last three Majors we've played. The good news for the rest of us is that he's not apparently planning a clean sweep of Majors as he appears to be leaving the Summer Quaich to some of the rest of us! Whoops - maybe I shouldn't have said that - there's still 17 weeks left in the Quaich - he could still do it!

B.o.G. 51 - Grant Arms

2011-05-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Slightly disappointingly, and despite prior warnings of our insatiable appetite for real ale, the Trade Winds at our hotel had run out the previous evening and we had to put up with pre dinner Gins and Tonic instead.

Dinner was good and we gathered afterwards to swap stories and consume more alcohol:

Dan Corbett, Jack Simpson & Bill Whyman

Keith Gray, Dick Taylor, Jas Bhagrath, Peter Street & Syd Freeman

Bill and Dick started swapping Achilles tendon stories, whereupon Bill decided to demonstrate the difference between one leg and the other and how squeezing the calf muscle produced different results:

That signalled time for bed for me!

B.o.G. 51 - day one - Grantown-on-Spey

2011-05-10T04:22:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

As already indicated, we got lucky with the weather on Sunday. It was a little bit squally as last September's champion teed off at Grantown:

We had a couple of showers, but, generally, the afternoon was pretty good. Here's Jas playing off a tricky lie at the 5th hole:

The next hole was interesting for our fourball - Ian McRae pulled his drive left at the 6th hole and was approaching his ball in the rough when he was dive-bombed by the most aggressive Oystercatcher I've ever seen. Ian was understandably a bit nervous about playing his shot, fearing it might attack again. Here he is looking round for it, whilst it lurks innocently behind his back:

The inevitable then happened - Ian duffed his shot in to the burn ahead and the Oystercatcher seemed to take great delight in this as it squawked overhead:

Bill Whyman made his debut this time and was playing behind our group. Bill's still recovering from his Achilles tendon repair and was sharing a buggy with Dan. We had plenty of time waiting on the 8th tee (again!) and so I thought I would check out exactly how big a bandit he was, playing off 23, and so I watched as he played his approach shot to the 7th. Unfortunately, Bill lived up to his handicap on this occasion as he thinned the ball through the green and his next action was therefore:

Back to Mr. McRae again - tree trouble at the 9th:

At the 13th hole, the Oystercatcher nests were well signposted but Ian still ended up near them, although he did try to give them as wide a berth as possible this time:

Scores were generally pretty good, despite some complaints about poor greens. The Maestro topped the charts again:

Freeman 39
Grigor 37
Stewart 36
Corbett 36
Street 36
Whyman 34
Cook 32
Gray K 31
Taylor 27
McRae 26
Bhagrath 24
Simpson 19

Winning team on the day, naturally, was Syd's group, with Dan, Dick and Bill sharing the spoils. Nearest the Pins were Keith and Malcolm, and Longest Drive was Dick.

Then we all scurried off to the Ben Mhor for some lovely pints of Wildcat and to watch Man U outclass Chelsea and all but seal the Premiership.

Q6

2011-05-05T04:49:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Rob was invigilating so he passed the torch (and the ball) to me to do the admin this week.

'Twas a fine evening once more, although some said it got a bit parky later on. It was the first Quaich week this year that co-incided with the Wednesday medal - perhaps that's why - with one exception - scoring was so poor. For the 3rd week in a row, attendance was back in double figures (just), although Harry was a late casualty - work-inflicted apparently. Scores on the doors were:

Stewart, Ian 40
Sharp, Ian 34
Meaden, John 34
Grant, Gary 34
Corbett, Daniel 31
Gray, Keith 30
McRae, Ian 29
Riches, Hugh 29
Simpson, Jack 28
Taylor, Dick 24

The overall average score on the night was just 31.3, which is the second lowest so far this season, but, if my score was taken out, the average would have been a paltry 30.3 - well below par.

It was my second win of the season and my second 40-pointer. Dan also has two 40 pointers and John Meaden one, and the total of five to date is equal to the same time last year, despite lower attendance levels. 40 points remains the season's high score to date. As it was a medal last night, my handicap will also be cut - just in time for Boat of Garten - and I'll be back down to 10 again.

At the other send of this week's table, Dick notched up his second DoD of the season and, in so doing, equalled the season's low score, set by Keith in week 2.

After 6 weeks of the 2011 Quaich, 18 names have scores on the board, with a few well-kent "regulars" yet to come out to play - Steve, Les, Gordon and John McW, to name but a few. Rumour hath it that they will all shortly make their 2011 debuts. Some of them may get a bit of a shock with the condition of the course - not just the well-publicised problems caused by snow blight on the greens (which don't appear to be disappearing as fast as had been confidently predicted by our Greens Convenor just a few weeks ago), but also how hard and dry the rest of the course is. A classic scene was at the side of the 11th tee, where the ground is not just bare and hard, but is also now cracking up like a scene from some horrible African drought/famine.

Full details of all the stats have already been posted on the Yahoo site and can be viewed at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/Summer%20Quaich%202011.xls. For those who can't easily access this, here's the short form leader board:

Stewart, Ian 180
Corbett, Daniel 177
Taylor, Dick 152
Sharp, Ian 139
Riches, Hugh 126
Gray, Keith 117
Cook, Archie 108
Pollard, Rob 105
Simpson, Jack 94
McRae, Ian 85

The top three above have played in 5 out of the 6 available weeks so far, whilst the next three have played 4 times, and the last 4 three times each, so it's all a little bit misleading at this stage - it'll be a few weeks yet until there's a clearer pattern.

So, it was left to last week's winner to present the ball to this week's winner - although there weren't many left in the clubhouse by this time:

Next week's another Medal week and Rob's back in charge. From what I can see, the following entries have been made from our group:

16:52 - Corbett & Meaden
17:07 - Stewart, Simpson & Taylor
17:15 - Pollard & Salter (with Craig Lindsay) - in with the big boys, there, Rob!
17:30 - Sharp & McRae

There are still some spots available if anyone else wants to take part - including a space with the Ians at 17:30.

Incidentally, the computer system appears to be open for bookings for the first Sunday Medal on 22nd May, but, for some reason, no times are shown - only standby. Don't know why.

Fraserburgh outing

2011-05-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Yesterday was another glorious day - over 15 hours of wall to wall sunshine - even in the Broch! Dick and Rob made it to our factories in good time to try the taste panel, but where were Dan & Archie (aka Darchie)? Apparently they were wandering around the harbour asking strangers if they knew of any fish factories in the town! Not many.

We found them eventually and they all seemed to go away happy after their tasting - and the free product they got perhaps helped. We met Keith, Harry and Raymond down at the clubhouse and then lined up for the team photo before we teed off:

Salter, Corbett, Orr, Pollard, Gray, Cook, Taylor and Stewart

The views from the course were fabulous - especially from the high point of the 3rd tee. The sea was a spectacular blue and you could see for miles around.

The course was looking good and everyone especially enjoyed the fast, true greens. Raymond seemed to be shooting the lights out - a tremendous shot for nearest the pin at the tricky 7th green, then a good drive at the last to win another prize - but none of this was reflected in his final score. Archie played consistently well, however, and picked up nearest the pin at the 14th plus the overall winner on the day with 36 points. I was 2nd with 32 and Keith was 3rd with 31. Team A - Archie, Raymond, Keith and Rob - had 117 points to Team B's 110 points and took the ball marker prizes.

Full scores were:

Cook, Archie 36
Stewart, Ian 32
Gray, Keith 31
Salter, Harry 30
Pollard, Rob 26
Corbett, Daniel 25
Orr, Raymond 24
Taylor, Dick 23

A grand day out, rounded off by excellent ale and food at the Redgarth Inn, Oldmeldrum on the way home.

Fraserburgh outing

2011-05-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We're hoping the brilliant March/April weather continues for a bit longer - the forecast for Tuesday's Fraserburgh outing seems reasonable enough - fingers crossed. Bill Whyman's achilles tendon hasn't quite healed sufficiently and he's now had to pull out of this trip, but Archie has been a late entrant so there's 8 of us playing - Cook, Corbett, Gray (K), Orr, Pollard, Salter, Stewart & Taylor.

Individual stableford and a team prize - teams, with handicaps balanced as evenly as possible are:

Cook, Gray, Orr & Pollard
Corbett, Salter, Stewart & Taylor

Last year's scores were:

Taylor, Dick 33
Stewart, Ian 31
Freeman, Syd 29
Miller, Bill 28
Street, Peter 27
Cook, Archie 26

Keith and Harry are travelling together, as are Dick and Rob, I believe. Archie, Raymond and Dan will, I presume, travel in one car together too. Best go cross country - Echt, Dunecht, Kintore, Inverurie, Oldmeldrum, Methlick, New Deer, Strichen, Memsie and then Fraserburgh is the way to go. Allow an hour and a half. Look for the large dunes - go past Tesco and then right at the next mini roundabout - can't miss it.

Tee time is 2pm approx - I'll be there just before that, but, if anyone fancies joining me beforehand at the taste panel at our factory, let me know. Guided tours an optional extra.

Some memories of previous outings:

2001 - Stewart, Grigor, Bhagrath, Page, Davies & Miller

2002 - Stewart, Taylor, Anderson, Edwards, Street & Bhagrath

2003 in the Redgarth - Freeman, Stewart, Taylor, Page, Edwards, Anderson, Miller & Bhagrath

2006 - Stewart, Taylor, Bhagrath & Edwards

2010 - in the Redgarth again - Taylor, Cook, Stewart, Freeman, Street & Miller.

Hopefully we'll be eating our bar suppers at the same table again on Tuesday.

Q5

2011-04-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Database updated this morning and full details of leader board etc available for viewing on the Yahoo site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/Summer%20Quaich%202011.xls

I've added just one more photo to the blog - the new addition of "Helen's Hut", which was delivered on Monday this week. It's a mini halfway house, kindly donated by Helen Edon to the club, and it's positioned beside the 12th tee, but looking up towards the 3rd tee:

A couple of quick stats from last night:

John Meaden's first win since June, 2005 - this might be a record gap - need to research more
Ian McRae's previous DoD was exactly one year ago to the day
John's score was our 4th 40-pointer this season - and this remains the highest score to date

Q4

2011-04-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Rob has done his weekly report and also remembered his camera (for a change), so I had originally planned to do nothing this week other than update the database (already completed and available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/Summer%20Quaich%202011.xls), but I changed my mind and decided to add a few stats for those of you who need your weekly fix, so here goes:

The exceptional weather we've had since we got back from Turkey is not, it transpires, really that exceptional. Last night's 19 C was surpassed in the Aprils of 2007 and 2003, both of which hit 22 C.
Four of the eleven who played yesterday wore shorts - Rob, Hugh, Ian and I.
Dan is the only ever-present this season.
Best overall attendance this season - 7 conventional plus 4 early birds = 11.
I was the first winner this season playing at the conventional/traditional time - i.e. not an early bird.
It was Malcolm's first ever recorded DoD in the Quaich.
I went from zero to hero - last week's DoD to this week's winner.
It was Dan's 2nd 40-pointer this season - and my first - equal highest points this season (40).
My 75 last night was the best Gross score so far this season.
Like Dan last night, I too, was pipped on countback 2 years ago from making it 3 wins in a row. I perhaps misled Rob a bit last night when I said 3 wins in a row had never been done before, however - what I meant was it hadn't been done in more recent times. I don't have the full details available, but I'm pretty sure that in Terry's magical year of 1998 when he won 11 times in all, that he must have had at least 3 in a row then - if he didn't it was a real statistical quirk.

To finish, a couple of photos from last night:

Full bloom at the 6th - the trees, that is, not Hugh!

Rob had just got up off his knees, hence the pregnant duck pose.

Sunday golf

2011-04-17T11:03:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Another glorious Sunday and a good turnout of 9 of us again - although surprisingly only 4 of us donned shorts. The leading group waltzed up the 6th hole - Peter to the left, Dan to the right, and guess who right up the middle again?:

Following them were Ian, Nigel and I. Ian's tee shot at the 3rd almost went straight in the hole, pitching just in front and stopping just a few inches on the other side of the pin - yes, we gave him the putt!:

The course is getting better each day - although we could do with some rain - it's been a long dry spell and the course is playing like a links course in places. The greens are slowly getting rid of the winter snow damage, although the 12th still looks like it's got a severe case of measles. The daffs are still in full bloom, as here at the bridge at the 12th:

and the 13th box tee was back in use again - here's Ian powering another one away from it:

We have the same 3 tee times booked for next Sunday, but Nigel will be back in Dubai, and both Dan and I are away that day, so, from today's group only Peter, Bill, Syd, Jas, Archie and Ian will be around, so more bodies will be required if all three tee times are to be used.

Q3

2011-04-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Rob for the match report - and well done, Dan - 2 weeks in a row, and the first 40 pointer of the season. Rather than present himself with the winner's ball, Dan got Rob to do the honours:

Dan has a good early season lead, being the only person to have played all 3 weeks to date. Attendances are well down on previous years - virtually half the usual level - where are you all? It could have been a little higher last night, but both Keith and Jas had to make late withdrawals.

Statistically, an interesting night, however. Ponder the following:

Having had my first ever DoD last year - in the 20th year of the Quaich - I managed to repeat the feat a little less than a year later.
My DoD score of 32 points is the highest ever recorded in the 9 years when there are detailed records.
There were 3 Scots competing against 3 RoW's last night - and the aggregate points were tied at 108.
Of the 17 rounds played so far this season, 13 of them have been from over 60's - perhaps not so surprising when you consider the early tee times we've had so far, which make it difficult for the (younger) workers.

I'd like to play next week, Rob - any time - hopefully we'll have a few more playing and some more sociable fourballs like we had last night.

Weekend golf in the sun

2011-04-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

On Saturday, Keith, Dan and I played together in the medal. Dan couldn't quite make up his mind whether to wear shorts or not, and Annette's last minute appearance at the start was due to a forgotten Sky Caddie:

Sunday was even nicer and there was a good turnout of 10 of us - seven of whom were on the Desert Classic in Turkey just over a week ago - Richard was the only one on that trip not present this morning. It was a lot warmer than forecast and there were a few regular shorts-wearers who regretted their decision not to don shorts - only Dan, Nigel and I kept the faith. The spring blossoms brightened the course:

After golf, it was beer on the balcony for the first time this season:

The usual three tee times booked for next Sunday - who's going to be there?

Q2

2011-04-07T04:59:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The early birds had teed off almost a couple of hours before I arrived. It was a lovely afternoon - 20 C - and I didn't mind waiting for my playing partner, although I did feel a bit like Billy No Mates:

IRS waits at 1st tee

It's good to be back playing midweek golf again - and nice to see the return of our old friends:

Oyster catcher

Ian had to rush on to the course - he had a couple of trolley incidents. First of all, he tried to emulate Archie, Archie, the battery boy as he forgot to connect his battery and pushed his Powacaddy up the 1st hole. He also forgot to strap down his bag - we had played 6 holes before he realised it and came unstuck as he let his trolley meander down towards the 7th tee:

Sharpy has trolley trouble

Ian and I raced round the course - we got held up briefly at the 15th and 16th by a Seniors fourball, but we still managed round 18 holes in 2 hours 20 minutes - that's the way to play golf - none of this holiday 5 hours crap. In fact, we were in the clubhouse very shortly after the early birds, who had teed off at 3 pm.

Last week's winner presented the prize ball to this week's winner:

Archie presents to Dan

There was a bit of confusion about the kitty, but eventually we decided that the Quaich "entry fee" should be £5 per head, with £1 per head being kept back for the kitty and the prize ball, with the rest going to the winner to pay for the drinks and nibbles - but no doubt Rob may change this again next week!

A few facts and early season stats:

It was Keith's first DoD for 5 years
Only 11 rounds played in 2 weeks makes it the slowest start to a season since 1998
Dan's 39 points is the highest so far
My score of 77 is the best gross so far
Keith's 24 points is the lowest so far
Archie's 35 points is the lowest winning score so far
Dick's 25 points last week is the highest DoD score so far

So there's a few targets to be aimed at.

I'm available next week and would like to play at 16:45 if possible. Hopefully we'll have a few more regulars showing up as the evenings get a bit longer and the tee times a bit later each week.

Augusta

2011-04-05T02:39:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was exactly 5 years ago today when we were in the hallowed grounds of Augusta National G.C.:

13th hole - photo by JSB

Blog sidebar of historic photos updated today.

Cornelia Diamond Hotel

2011-04-04T09:16:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

I showed Bill and Archie yesterday the plan of our hotel and grounds for this year's Desert Classic and I thought perhaps a few more might be interested in seeing the extensive scale of the layout and some of the activities available:

Hotel, grounds and pools

Activities near beach

(Click on each photo to expand).

We also discovered that the predominant local wildlife, roaming the fairways was:

Yes - it was often a close-run thing whether the tortoise traversed the tee before certain players completed their tee shots or not!

What we did on our holidays

2011-03-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The more musically minded will recognise the heading above as the title of Fairport Convention's second album release in 1969, but yesterday at Cornelia Diamond Hotel (http://www.corneliaresort.com/) we had a completely free day as our flight back to Glasgow did not leave until after midnight, so it was just like being on (a non-golfing) holiday.

Four of us had briefly toyed with the idea of another round of golf, but we eventually engaged brains and remembered how knackered and over-golfed we were already, so we opted for a lazy day round the resort, utilising some of the superb facilities we hadn't previously had time to use. We had a free run of the place, which even extended to an extra day's free food and booze!

Richard took a taxi in to the city of Antalya to have a look around there, whilst Malcolm, Keith and I opted for the enormous outdoor pool, and Jas and Ian walked around the extensive grounds and on to the beach, as Nigel packed for his slightly earlier flight to Istanbul and on from there back to Dubai.

All of us bar Richard met for lunch at Sapore Snack Bar:

Over lunch we discussed how to fill the rest of the day. Squash doubles was a possibility but then we realised we only had one suitable pair of shoes amongst the four of us! OK - let's try 10 pin bowling then:

I hit the spa after this and then got changed and met up with Ian and Jas to hitch a ride to Belek, the local town, in Nigel's taxi to the airport. It's a fairly small town that was pretty run down, but the huge investments in the 14 golf courses with brand names like Faldo and Montgomerie, and the massive hotels, meant it was about time that Belek got updated too. They're installing new squares and fountains etc and the town is already full of golf shops and international fashion brands. They've even installed a Disney-esque mock Greco-Roman aquaduct round the town. Here's a brief panorama:

As you can see, not exactly a thriving metropolis - yet.

The three of us returned from Belek in time for aperitifs and found the other four engaged in bridge - again:

Dinner and digestifs followed then it was off to the airport to make our very anti-social flight time.

I think we all agreed Turkey was a great experience - the variety and quality of the golf courses and the standard of the hotels combine to make it a truly competitive golf destination - and the value of the "all-inclusive" concept puts it streets ahead of its Spanish and Portuguese competitors for Northern Europeans looking for some quality early or late (or mid) season golf. I'm sure we'll be back.

DC XII finale

2011-03-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It looked like it might be heading for a photo finish with just one point separating Syd and I going in to the final round, with me having the slight advantage of dropping a lower score than Syd's, effectively giving me a 3 point lead - as long as I could improve on 24 points on the final day's play at Tat.

I did manage to beat my dropping score, but by only one point to take me up to 122 points for the best 4 rounds. Syd, however, romped away with it, scoring a fine 34 points to give him a total of 128 to take the trophy for "only" the 3rd time - and his first win in the Desert Classic since 2004 in U.A.E.

Here's Syd receiving his winning ball from Richard yesterday at Tat:

We did the prize-giving back in my hotel room - and drank more of the free booze supplied in the "all-inclusive" deal of course!:

The guys bought me a gift shirt, modelled here:

One of the ironies was the TV screen in my room which displayed the following information when we got back last evening (Tuesday) - it was at least 2 days too late telling us this!

Enough for now - more stats to follow in due course. Today's a lazy day by the pool as our flight home is not until after midnight.

DC XII - days 3 & 4

2011-03-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Apologies for the delayed reports - late tee times the last 2 days being the root cause. Saturday at the National course - the original one here - was a slow one. The first 6 holes took 2 hours and it was 3 hours for the front nine, but it did speed up on the back nine and we did make it in before dusk - just! Syd was the winner with 30 points and took the prize from Nigel:

Yesterday at Carya was an even bigger farce. With a 2pm tee time, we knew it would be tight to get in 18 holes before darkness descended, but we consoled ourselves with the fact that the clocks had gone forward and we had an extra hour of evening daylight - or so we thought. The clocks in our rooms were updated automatically and we all appeared downstairs waiting for our 12:30 pm pick-up. For once our very punctual driver wasn't there - where was he?

Well, it transpired that the Turkish Government had made a late decree that the onset of summer should be delayed by 24 hours - due apparently to some university entrance examinations. So it was still only 11:30 am and our driver wouldn't appear for another hour. The real cock-up was with our 2:06 tee time - it was so busy and there was no way we were getting round 18 holes - and we didn't. Despite virtually running the last 3 or 4 holes, the leading group only managed 16 holes, with those behind one less.

The greens at Carya were as bad as we had been warned - covered in sand, but like concrete. The whole experience was foul and we decided the day should be declared null and void - although we could not deny Keith the credit of a daily win with his score of 23 points for 16 holes:

Back to our home course again today - as long as the clocks have now actually moved forward!

and the 2nd winner of a 2011 ball was .........?

2011-03-25T23:43:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

...... also called Ian:

Yes - it was my turn yesterday - I had 35 points on the Faldo course at our home resort. Syd was next best with 30. Richard and I beat Jas and Ian in our match, and me and Syd got the NP's. Nobody hit the fairway for the LD. It was my day OK, as I even won the sweep as to the total number of birdies.

Malcolm and Keith also beat Syd and Nigel to give the (current) squash players a 2-0 win to level the match with the (former) squash players.

and the first winner of a 2011 ball was .......?

2011-03-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We stayed in near Glasgow airport overnight and went for a couple of beers and a curry with my brother-in-law, Brian:

Beautifully sunny but coolish conditions at Sueno Dunes for the first day's golf in this year's Desert Classic - and here's the winner receiving his prize:

Ian had 30 points. We had to walk - there were no buggies available. Nice course - undulating, tree lined fairways. Today it's the Faldo course at our home resort. Some hotel, by the way - and the "all-inclusive" concept is pretty good.

Golf season approaching

2011-03-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The Vernal Equinox means the golf season is about to start. Six of us managed a round on Saturday afternoon, including a rare sighting of a lesser spotted Pollard, who looks to be in good form already - "it's all about early cocking" he whispered to me as he boomed another one down the fairway.

There's a few changes to the course, including the new tee at the 10th, and the removal of one of the trees at the back of the 11th green, where it looks like they are constructing a small mound:

Archie & Rob at back of 11th green

The bunkers at the 13th green have new revetted faces - normally only seen on links courses:

Newly revetted bunkers at 13th

SGU card

2011-03-08T05:42:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The SGU have introduced a Scottish Golf Card, which gives 50% discounts at various courses throughout Scotland for just £10 per year - check http://www.scottishgolf.org/go/play-the-game/scottish-golf-card or click and print:

Courses include:

Brechin
Downfield
Monifeith
Montrose
Crail
Dalmahoy
Braemar
Duff House Royal
Newmachar
Peterculter
Portlethen
Blairgowrie (Lansdowne)

and many others.

The latter may be of interest to those going on Peter's Blairgowrie trip in June. Peter has confirmed with the course that cardholders will get £15 off the package price that day (down from £70 to £55), which more than pays for the cost of the card in one go!

I've bought one and if a few others did the same, we might be able to organise a couple of other trips to places we haven't played before - or for a while.

2011 BSV balls

2011-03-07T03:23:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

They have arrived - just in time for Desert Classic XII:

Who will be the first to win one? Last year it was Keith who won the first day's golf in Marrakech - will he manage a repeat this time?

Double birthday celebrations tomorrow!

2011-03-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Gordon Moir is 52 tomorrow (Sunday 6th) - and I am exactly 10 years older than him, and will be hoping to celebrate by holding a golf club in my hands for the first time since November.

Let's hope the 2011 golf season gives Gordon plenty of opportunities to dress like this:

Meanwhile, my new look, hopefully temporary, gap-toothed smile will be on show for the next 3 months - don't run away when you see it:

Have a good one, Gordon - and I'll try too!

Dave and Doris

2011-02-23T00:44:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We don’t get the chance to see much of Dave and Doris nowadays, but there they were yesterday, taking up the whole back page of the P & J’s “Your Home” supplement, in an advert for Woodland Grove:

Hope to see them both soon when the golf season gets under way – only 4 weeks to go now, and 8 of us are off to Turkey for the first outing of the year - Desert Classic XII. Will Malcolm, 5 time winner of the trophy and defending champion, do it again, or will Syd, the Iberian Cup holder returning to the Desert Classic after a couple of years' absence, pick up his 3rd win?

Then again, there's always Nigel to contend with - which game will he bring along this time? He ran away with it in 2007, 2008 and 2009 but was only 6th last year in Marrakech, having missed the first day's play (and playing off 18) - he won't be missing any days this year, and, right now, he's no doubt putting in the practice hours in the sunnier climes of Dubai, whilst the rest of us long for our first hit of the year.

And who will be the first recipient of a 2011 logo'd ball? All will be revealed in due course - watch this space.

Victor Meldrew time

2011-01-19T14:19:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was definitely a case of "I don't believe it" last night - Jo and I went out for a bite and we ended up in the Lord Nelson brewpub in Sydney. We were about to leave when we noticed the noise levels were rising as a group of men on a stag night pub crawl entered the pub, when I heard a cry - "Ian!" - it was Richard Simcox again! He was with the bride's father and fellow Banchorian, Alistair Harrison:

As Humphrey Bogart famously once said “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, (he) she walks into mine.”

Twice in one day - more than anyone could take surely?

Great pub by the way!

Odd couples in Oz

2011-01-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We flew out to Hong Kong on Friday, spent 3 days there, then flew down to Sydney this morning. After checking in, we walked down to the waterfront and who did we bump into, but the Simcoxes! Some beers were called for:

As the saying goes, it is indeed a very small world!

2011 Diary

2010-12-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The Winter Solstice today signifies the downhill run to summer - theoretically at least. Just 91 days to go until we head off to Turkey on the Desert Classic, and the Summer Quaich starts just 7 days later. Here's the schedule for next year (days to start in brackets):

01-Nov-10 - 27-Mar-11 Winter Grand Prix, Banchory
23-Mar-11 - 30-Mar-11 Desert Classic, Turkey (91)
30-Mar-11 - 31-Aug-11 Summer Quaich, Banchory (98)
08-May-11 - 09-May-11 Boat of Garten, Grantown/B.o.G. (137)
24-Jun-11 - 24-Jun-11 Midsummer, Edzell? (184)
27-Jun-11 - 27-Jun-11 Balmoral, Balmoral (187)
09-Jul-11 - 11-Jul-11 Summer Tour, Slaley Hall (199)
02-Sep-11 - 02-Sep-11 Terry's Memorial, Aboyne (254)
04-Sep-11 - 05-Sep-11 Boat of Garten, B.o.G. (256)
28-Oct-11 - 04-Nov-11 Iberian Cup, Tenerife (310)

Something to look forward to on yet another dark and freezing day!

Xmas social

2010-12-19T05:29:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Numbers were well down on previous years - no Cooks, Salters, Edwards, Moirs, Bhagraths, Freemans, Grants, Simpsons, Streets, Pages, Riches or Sutherlands, to name a few - but 16 of us had a nice, intimate evening at the Potarch last night round a nice, sociable, quadrangular table:

After dinner, with his erstwhile agent having retreated to USA in shame after securing only 2 (non-paying) gigs all year, Sebastian Dangerfield decided he had to take matters in to his own hands and set up an impromptu (not really - he brought his own guitar along!) gig in the adjacent lounge:

The audience was initially a little sparse, but there was at least one interested onlooker:

Good fun, and they looked after us really well - and it was over 25% cheaper than the Milton last year.

Have a good festive season, y'all.

Winter golf at BGC

2010-12-06T04:10:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Especially for our overseas members, some images from around the golf club yesterday - now you know why there has been no Winter Grand Prix report from Syd for the last 2 weeks!:

BGC course changes

2010-11-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Spotted a few changes on Sunday - my first round for 2 months - don't know how long they've been there, and apologies if you've all seen them already, but:

1) New tee being constructed at the 10th:

2) The area to the west of the Doo'cot tee, which was formerly G.U.R. has now been turfed over.

3) Two of the bunkers at the 13th green have had new riveted faces put in:

IC XII - prizegiving - and beyond

2010-11-15T12:45:00.001-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

We held the prizegiving in the meeting room downstairs and the Maestro duly received the Iberian Cup - for the 6th time:

Then it was my turn to be on the receiving end - Malcolm was delighted to see the back of the Wee Cup:

We went out to nearby restaurant Bodegan El Pato for dinner, where the walls were adorned with old farming implements etc. Syd was good enough to do the the Grim Reaper pose:

Back at our hotel, Archie did his usual and wound up the customers in the lounge for the arrival of that well known superstar, Rodney Dangerfield, whose last gig was at the Grant Arms, Grantown on Spey 2 months ago. It didn't take our Rodney long to get up on the chairs and roar out his renowned rendition of House of the Rising Sun:

Archie - you are officially evil. It was gone midnight by now and we had long ago discovered that any sounds coming from the lounge reverberated straight up to the bedrooms above. It took all of 2 minutes for the Duty Manager to arrive and ask for Rodney to leave his stage, whereupon he was greeted in Anglo Saxon, which, in turn, prompted him to threaten calling Security. The rest of us onlookers scarpered to our rooms - but the show did finish, as requested.

2010-11-13T23:40:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Well, Syd did it again - and in grand style. He scored 39 points again on the final day at El Rompido South yesterday and ended up retaining the Iberian Cup with the largest winning margin ever. His best 4 score of 146 was astonishing - when is age going to catch up with him?

In fact, Syd won just about everything - the Cup, the Eclectic (53, on countback from Ken), the Gross (of course), most daily wins (3), best 6 day score (199), most longest drives (2, equal with Malcolm), most matches won (all 6), and most winning fourballs (5).

In fact, it's easier to list what he didn't win, rather than what he did - he didn't win the Wee Cup - in fact he wasn't even nominated this year, belying prior years of multi nominations and wins. This dubious honour fell to me this year - having hardly put a foot wrong in the previous 11 years of the IC, I went to town a bit this year and a number of my nominations involved misuse of buggies, but the clincher came with my comment the other night about "who's the p**f with the cappucino?" - it wouldn't normally have even been a nomination, but coming on top of the others, I was defenceless.

Ken and Dick had most nearest the pins (3 apiece) and I had the most H.o.G.'s (2). Richard had the most Ladies (4), and Malcolm the most lost balls (16 out of a relatively small total of 111).

More stats and photos to folow in due course. Right now, I'm off to pack.

IC XII - days 3 & 4

2010-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The first full team photo of the holdiday was taken on the 1st tee at El Rompido South on Wednesday morning - and thankfully, the skies were blue:

Archie had a bit of tree trouble at the last hole - he never saw his ball again after it disappeared up a tree:

As already reported, Syd gave a masterful display and was duly presented with his winner's ball by Peter:

Dinner in the evening was back at our hotel - and, by now, we had our own table - stuck away in a corner where we could cause less trouble:

Thursday as our return trip to the North course at our home resort. Another lovely day, but, as we sat in the shade by the pool late afternoon, some of the more thin-blooded members of our group felt the need to (w)rap up - like hip hop stars:

Jas recorded his 2nd win of the week, pipping Syd on countback with 30 points:

Les was with us again and this time he stayed overnight and joined us for dinner down in El Rompido village. We had beers at the local sports bar first of all - it's run by a friendly, slightly camp little Brummie who gladly came out and took our orders for the second round. He returned with a tray full of beers and G & T's, with one cup of cappuccino. On spotting this, I cried out "who's the p**f with the cappuccino?" - meaning intended recipient Ken, of course - but, quick as a flash, our host piped up "me, right now!" as he passed the coffee to Ken. Impeccable timing.

IC XII - day 2

2010-11-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

I neglected to show Monday's winner receiving his prize, so here he is:

Tuesday was the first of Richard's days of rest, so Les met us at Nuevo Portil and took his place:

Malcolm faced an interesting challenge with this shot:

We were in rather futuristic looking, space age buggies:

The weather turned about half way round the course and we got a bit of a soaking. Waterproofs were donned, but Archie's split pants look was a bit different:

Tuesday's winner was KTP - allegedly suffering from a cold, which caused him to miss the previous evening's festivities - was this tantamount to cheating?:

NP's went to me and Syd, and Malcolm got the longest drive. Archie, Ken Malc and I had the best fourball score and the Majors again beat the Independents by two and a half to a half.

Iberian Cup XII

2010-11-08T23:23:00.001-08:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

All went well with the travel - barring Richard's car blowing up before they'd even left Banchory - and we settled in to our hotel in good time on Sunday.

Monday morning was a bit frantic, however, with a shortage of buggies plus Richard sleeping in causing much confusion at the start.

It was pretty cool and cloudy and our new team uniforms came in very handy - witness this photo after golf:

Jas was Monday's winner with 32 points and Syd and Ken got the NP's, and Syd also got the longest drive. Best fourball by far were Syd, Malc, Dan and Peter and the "Majors" cuffed the "Independents" by three matches to nil.

More to follow.

The Challenge 2010 - part 2

2010-09-27T11:11:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Finally we all sat down to dinner, and these were the scenes during the meal and afterwards when the prizes were being awarded:

Nice to see Irene Page, Linda Edmonds and Dave and Doris Edwards all coming along to join us.

The youngest member of the party was Ian McRae's son, Craig:

Janice Fulford and Raymond Orr got the nearest the pin prizes and Harry Salter won the longest drive. The overall result of the Challenge was in doubt until late on. The Rest of the World got off to an excellent start, winning the top match by 4 holes. Not only did Syd have a hole in one at the 2nd, but he also birdied 3 in a row - 14/15/16 - the first two with outrageous putts for birdie halves. When he wasn't doing that, Raymond came in. Gordon and I felt we'd been mugged and we were secretly delighted to contain Syd and Raymond to just a 4 hole deficit - it could have been a lot worse.

Les and Ian Sharp brought Scotland back in it with a good 2 hole victory over Harry and Ian Dring, but the USA/Ireland team easily beat the Scots in the Happy Families match, so, after 3 matches, RoW had a healthy 6 hole lead.

Match 4 brought a slightly surprising margin of victory for Scotland as the McRae/Sharp mixed team overcame RoW's Riches/Fulford by 5 holes, bringing Scotland to within a point overall.

Jackie - although batting for the other side - didn't fare much better than her husband in Match 5 - she and her partner John McWhinnie went down by a shock 4 hole margin to Rob Pollard and Julie Dring. RoW were now 5 holes up with only 2 matches to come in.

Jack and Dan, reliable as ever, did the business over Steve and John M., and their 2 hole win reduced Scotland's overall deficit to 3 holes. Meanwhile, the final match was back out on the course finishing off their last 2 holes.

The Scotland team had a 3 hole lead over RoW at the Doo'cot in the final (and only) all-Ladies fourball, but, at that time, the match in front of them hadn't finished and there were lots of frowns on Scottish brows in the clubhouse as the prospect of their first ever defeat in the 7 year history of the event loomed.

In the end, Angela and Joan won both the 17th and 18th holes over Anna and Lynda to record a 5 hole win, and give Scotland victory by 14 holes to 12 - but it had been a very close-run thing. Scotland did win 4 of the 7 matches, so I suppose the overall result was validated.

I personally thought the introduction of Mixed and Ladies' matches for the first time was a winner, although I know not everyone will agree. If it's any consolation to the losers, the men only matches finished 4 holes all, with Scotland winning two of the three matches.

All that was left was the traditional winning team photo:

The Challenge - 2010 - part 1

2010-09-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was a cool start to the day, but there was a hint of things improving as the morning wore on. Most of us gathered early on for bacon butties in the clubhouse - plus some team bonding - and national colours were issued to display in the team photos.

First group out were Gordon and I against Syd and Raymond Orr, making his debut in this competition - migrating to the R.o.W. team on the strength of his extensive overseas work experience in Africa and Asia:

Match 2 looked like it had the potential to be a close contest:

Match 3 was the first ever mixed four to take part in The Challenge, with the Cooks and the Taylors on opposite sides of the fence from their spouses - "Thai-chie" representing USA this year:

Match 4 had the makings of an interesting contest, with Alison Sharp and Janice Fulford both grateful that it was 4 ball better ball and not foursomes they had to play:

With apologies to teams 5-7, we now jump forward to the 2nd green, where there was a bit of excitement at Syd's beautiful drive, which covered the flag all the way. As it got ever nearer to the pin, Syd was heard to cry "don't go in, don't go in" - then "oh s**t"!

The rest of us were a lot more excited than Syd was - a mild wave for the camera was as much as we got from the Maestro:

Back in the clubhouse after the match was over, he looked a bit more relaxed participating in the traditional dram:

It had become a beautiful morning and the early starters gathered on the balcony to cheer/jeer the later teams home:

Team 5 got there in the end:

and I managed to get a distant shot of (most of) Team 6 on the last:

But what about Team 7? No photograph, I'm afraid, but they were to play a major part in the outcome of the trophy. Despite earlier instructions - most particularly from one McWhinnie to another over breakfast - the last group of Ladies were spotted walking off the course at the Doo'cot, thinking the match was over, with Scotland recording a 3 & 2 victory. John wasn't having that - "get back out there", he said - "you need to finish all 18 holes".

The drama unfolds later.

Tarland

2010-09-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Some of us who failed to qualify for Medal Finals today nipped over to Tarland for a friendly fourball. Les and Angela were also spotted there, but they didn't join us for beer and bacon butties in the Aberdeen Arms afterwards:

B.o.G. 50 - the final showdown

2010-09-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was a lovely start to the day at Boat of Garten- but it was windy as hell, making the prospect of any of the back markers overtaking Keith's very healthy lead even slimmer. We had time to shop for our souvenir shirts and sweaters and still have ample opportunity to practice. Here's a random selection of photos of our group:

The general opinion was that anyone shooting 30 points would be doing well, but, in the end, 4 of our gathering managed it, with Archie the best on 34 points. Nearest the pins were won by me and Peter, with Gary getting the longest drive. The team event was closely fought with Les, Archie and I finally coming out best by one point with a total of 87.

But what about the overall event and the destination of the trophy on this, our 50th event? The leading 3, who, in accordance with tradition, went out last, didn't do anything much to improve their overall totals, with Keith the best with just 28 points, giving him a 2 round total of 68.

This gave those not too far behind a chance of making up the deficit, and the first (indirect) reports were that Gary had scored 33 points to give him a total of 68 as well, which would have been enough to win him the trophy on countback. Gary himself corrected this when he came in to the clubhouse and confirmed that he had only scored 32 points - three putting the last - unlucky again! This meant that Keith could at last heave a huge sigh of relief.

So, we have a new name on the trophy - the 17th person to have their name engraved on the jug. Until the recent St. Andrews outing, Keith had never won any tournaments, outings or away days - just the odd weekly Quaich - but here he was, just 10 days after his inaugural victory, with a Major trophy in his hands:

All that remained was for Keith to invite us all back for the traditional celebratory drink back at the Boat Inn, Aboyne. Most of us made it along for a quick pint:

A great couple of days - and the package at the Grant Arms was the best value we've had for years, so it looks like we're going to repeat the formula next May. Keith will be organising that event and will soon be asking for an indication of those interested in coming along on 8th/9th May, 2011. Ken Black made a brief debut this time, and Ian McRae attended his 3rd outing, but both Nigel Meany and Ian Sharp had to miss out on their second appearances and sent their apologies, but we hope they - and any others - will all be back next time around.

B.o.G. 50 - part 2 - Grant Arms Hotel

2010-09-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

After golf at Grantown, we made the short trip to the Grant Arms Hotel - our first stay there. It's a big hotel and it was mobbed - there was a group of Dutch Mazda MX5 enthusiasts staying there - of whom more later.

We showered, changed, grabbed a complementary drink from the hotel, and gathered down in the Osprey Suite for a little interactive presentation I had prepared - or at least, most of us did. Search parties had to be sent out for Dick and Gary - the youngest member of our group is already exhibiting signs of severe cranial decline - it must be contagious.

We had a laugh going over the old times again - as Maurice Chevalier famously sang - "Ah yes, I remember it well" - not. Names, places, dates etc were all a blur and the usual subject of dispute. We showed photos of absent friends, courses we'd played, places we'd stayed and drinking dens visited, rounding it all off with a roll of honour of previous winners.

We were served dinner in the adjacent private lounge and, afterwards, we asked one of the very helpful young waitresses to take a photo of the entire team of 18. We had 20 booked originally, but Nigel had to change his plans and couldn't make it, and Ken Black had to cancel Monday, but Richard joined us for dinner and Monday's golf, so this was the line-up for the first of the photos, with ghostly apparitions from the past as a backdrop:

We took another one - this time with a bit more emphasis on the present rather than the past:

Most of us went through to the lounge afterwards - although some sloped off to bed - and we were greeted by this sight:

Yes, it was the Dutch Mazda lovers reciting Burns and other bits of Scottish "kultchur". One of their number - Gerda by name - then came over and engaged in conversation with Archie, whose command of Dutch is, of course, legendary:

Richard started singing "Yesterday" and everyone in the lounge joined in - all in perfect Scouse harmony. Dan was then encouraged to display his immaculate memory of "To a Haggis" to show these Dutch how it really should be done:

(Go to blog to view video)

Having forgotten the words at the end, one of the Dutch was kind enough to offer Dan a complete Burns lyrics book:

Archie then took to the centre of the floor and announced to the assembled throng - did they realise we have a pop superstar in our midst? One "Sebastian Dangerfield" no less - and here he is to give us his wonderful and unique version of "House of the Rising Sun" - you can guess the rest.

Great evening.

B.o.G. 50 - part 1 - Grantown

2010-09-07T00:26:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The big day had finally come and our 50th weekend at Boat of Garten in the 25th year of the trophy started in bright breezy weather at Grantown - a course we had played many times before, but not for a few years.

Here's the first group out, posing for the camera:

Gary drove the green at the 1st hole, but just missed out on his eagle putt - unlucky again!

Team 2 consisted of our elder statesman, flanked by Bob Cooper, who had made a special trip up from Herefordshire for this event, and Rob Pollard. Poor Syd looks like a midget between them - although definitely not in golfing terms:

Eschewing formal line-ups, most of teams 5 & 6 gathered in front of the clubhouse:

Team 3 did the honours, however:

as did team 4:

The manager of the Grant Arms Hotel, where we were staying, made a special trip round to the golf club to present us with a bottle of malt whisky to celebrate our event. The first group took it out and left it at the 10th tee for everyone to have a tipple. I never got a chance to photograph anyone else enjoying a dram, so it fell to Jas to do the honours and pose for the camera:

My playing partners and I put our tee shots at the 13th about 100 yards apart. I went right, whilst Archie and Jas went left towards the woods. I chipped on to the green and two putted for par, then sat down for a while, whilst they continued to search for their balls:

Archie got his OK, but Jas never found his one, and, judging by the glare he is giving Archie here, Jas seemed not too pleased when Archie eventually gave up the ghost and went to play his shot:

Scoring on the day was pretty mixed - there was a 17 point spread between first and last. Keith continued his recent good form, winning with 40 points, and also getting one of the nearest the pin prizes. The other NP was won by Dan, whilst Les got the longest drive. The team event, with all 3 scores counting, was won by Keith, Malcolm and Dan with a total of 108 points.

The Terry Edmonds Memorial Trophy

2010-09-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

What a glorious day we had at Aboyne yesterday - a real contrast from last year's event, which was rained off (for the 2nd time in its relatively short history). It was shorts all round as the teams lined up for the off - first up were Gary, Ian and Paul:

Then the girls posed for the camera:

Syd, Dan and Ken (just flown in from Abu Dhabi):

Bill Whyman, Matt Grigor, Dick and Malcolm:

Last off were Archie, Bill M, me and Peter:

From the 10th fairway, we looked across the lake and it seemed that the Lodge on the Loch had expanded substantially since we were last here - or are we mistaken?:

Individual winner on the day, and the first person in the 9 years of the event to get his name on the trophy twice (apart from "rained off") was Malcolm with 38 points:

Syd was a distant 2nd with 34, and I was 3rd one further point behind. Unsurprisingly, the team event was also won by Malcolm's group, but the competition wasn't exactly fierce - particularly from team 2, who forgot to keep their team score!

Archie got nearest the pin at the 4th and Malcolm (again) got longest drive at the 16th. Before high tea, we all lined up outside, complete with groupies, for a team photo:

2010 Quaich

2010-09-03T03:11:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

As reported previously, Keith and I didn't fare as well as we hoped on Wednesday but John Meaden certainly did much better and leapfrogged Keith in to 3rd place overall. For those that couldn't access the file on the Yahoo site, here's the closing top 10:

Sharp, Ian 377
Stewart, Ian 374
Meaden, John 372
Gray, Keith 371
Dring, Ian 370
Simpson, Jack 366
Taylor, Dick 361
Corbett, Daniel 360
Pollard, Rob 351
Cook, Archie 341

It was Ian's 4th win in the Quaich overall - a record. It was a fairly narrow margin of victory, and the winning total was 9 points less than last year, but it was more than enough.

If I had managed a few more points, I would have become the oldest winner ever. Dick won it when he was 60 back in 2006, but, at 61 (and a half), I had a chance of beating this. Don't suppose the chance will come along again - there's none of us getting any younger.

The record winning points score goes right back to the first year of the Quaich in 1991 when Jas scored 409 points (although the detailed records for 1992, 1995 & 1996 are missing - Bill, me and Ken P being the winners on those occasions).

The record winning margin, however, was Terry's astonishing 31 point gap over 2nd in 1998.

The best average score over all rounds played this year was John McWhinnie's 35.3 - although he only played 7 times. Keith was next on 35.0, with me and Ian Sharp close behind on 34.9.

The narrowest range of scores in the top 10 was Ian Dring's 11 point span - never scored less than 30 points, with a maximum of 41. Keith and Dick had a range of 12, and I was 13.

Attendances were down a little on last year at 11.9 per week.

We ended up with sixteen 40 pointers - exactly the same as last year.

More stats another time.

The Last of the Summer Whine (2)

2010-09-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

A few of my photos from last night:

Rob's photos

2010-09-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

In reverse order, here's Rob's photos from last night:

The Last of the Summer Whine

2010-09-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Just a quick blog posting - and one team photo from last night's snackette:

Everyone (including me) seems to be having trouble viewing Rob's photos so I've asked him to send them to me under separate cover and I'll post them on the blog for viewing there.

The story of the season will follow later, but everyone knows that both Keith and I failed in our mission to usurp Mr. Sharp's stronghold, despite the fact that he didn't have a great evening and, in pontoon/blackjack terms, he "stuck" rather than twisted.

The rest of last night's stats:

Jack's second win of the season and his second 40 pointer
Out of nowhere in 2nd place last night and with his first 40 pointer of the season was Hugh
Jack's 43 points equalled the record for the season set by Steve a month ago
Gary's gross 70 was the best of the season - knocking me off the top!
Rob's 3rd DoD this year was also the highest DoD score of the season - 30

More to follow in due course

Summer Quaich - final night

2010-08-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

A few people have indicated that they can't access the database on the Yahoo site through the link I sent with the weekly report, so, here's the leader board, with scores to drop in brackets:

1 Sharp, Ian 377 (35)
2 Stewart, Ian 374 (35)
3 Gray, Keith 371 (34)
4 Dring, Ian 369 (34)
5 Meaden, John 367 (34)
6 Taylor, Dick 360 (34)
7 Corbett, Daniel 358 (31)
8 Simpson, Jack 354 (31)
9 Pollard, Rob 351 (31)
10 Cook, Archie 341 (29)
11 McRae, Ian 330 (30)
12 Riches, Hugh 312 (28)
13 Black, Ken 307 (22)
14 Gray, Les 285
15 McWhinnie, John 247
16 Fulford, Steve 235
17 Salter, Harry 232
18 Bhagrath, Jas 192
19 Grant, Gary 142
20 Moir, Gordon 130
21 Page, Ken 67
22 Grigor, Malcolm 31
23 Street, Peter 28

I understand Rob's intention will be to comply with tradition and put the leaders out first on the last night this Wednesday - no doubt we'll hear in due course. Soup and sannies are on the agenda and make sure you can participate in the celebratory dram from the winner by making arrangements to leave the car at home! Even if the increasingly shorter evenings don't allow you to play all or part of the round on Wednesday, do come along for the post-match celebrations.

St Andrews

2010-08-28T02:32:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

(Side panel archive photos updated on blog).

After a 4 year gap, yesterday brought the return of the (non-Midsummer) St Andrews outing, when 8 of us went down and played the Eden course. The set-up there is now very professional - there's a lovely clubhouse (not the one used for playing the Old/New/Jubilee courses) with outdoor seating area, and you get a nice strokesaver when you check in.

We had a spot of lunch then headed for the course. Here we all are on the first tee:

The course goes right out to the estuary - and Dan was very close to it at one hole - thankfully, the tide was out:

We had a shower early on, but, despite the gathering gloom in the distance, we managed to escape any further wet weather - and the hail storm we discovered they had in Banchory later on - and I think we all enjoyed the course, which is very playable for a group of diverse handicaps - although there were a couple of abstainers - "very short" and "a bit samey" were a couple of the remarks. I'll leave you to put names to the quotes.

Compared with £130 for the Old Course, £120 for the new clifftop Castle course and £65 for both the New and Jubilee courses, the Eden represents pretty good value at £40 per round, and still gives a nice flavour of what it's like to play links golf at St Andrews.

It was a close-run thing in the individual competition - Syd had 37 points, but Dan and Keith both came in with 38 points, with Keith just pipping Dan on countback after a fine inward half of 22 points.

Peter and Bill won the nearest the pin competitions and Keith got the longest drive. A team event was played, with the best 3 stableford scores at each hole counting. Syd, Peter, Ken and Dick scored 107 points, but Keith, Dan, Bill and I comfortably won with a total of 119 points.

There was a bit of consternation and confusion after the event, with Ken being the unwitting (and unwilling) victim of circumstances, resulting in him having to squeeze in to the back of Dan's car, with bags all over him for the short trip to Whey Pat for post-match ales. Mea culpa.

The Betty Stogs at Whey Pat was excellent, however, and, as we had finished much earlier than we thought we would, we then sloped off to the Balaka for our meal and managed to squeeze our order in just before the end of the early bird special, which gave us 3 excellent courses for £11.95.

We were all safely back in Banchory not long after 9pm - a very nice day out - it could become an annual event again.

Q22

2010-08-26T04:54:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

The bearded one forgot his camera again, so it was down to me for some "action" shots from last night - mostly long distance ones. Here's Keith and Dan considering their options on the 9th green:

Dick waits at the 9th, admiring the rainbow:

The stragglers at the 4th hole as we played the 10th - Steve seems to be leading Ken a merry dance:

Last, but not least, RP presenting the winner's ball to our man from the Black Isle:

Now the stats:

Amazingly, all bar the evening's DoD improved their top 10 score
Dan's 2nd win of the season
Dick's 3rd DoD this season - prior to this, he hadn't had one since 2005
Dan's 2nd 40-pointer this season brought our total up to a slightly more respectable 14
It was the highest average score of the season - 35.5, but a CSS of 67 meant that stableford par was, effectively, 38 points and only two players bettered that

Ian Sharp's lead at the top was halved to 3 points, but no doubt he'll be there again next week to ease away from the chasing pack once more. However, in the interests of clarity, and in accordance with well established tradition, in the unlikely event of there being a tie on top 10 points for the Quaich, the established countbacks are:

Number of weekly wins - if still level, then:
Total points scored - if still level, then:
Scratch points scored - if still level, then:
Final night's score

I know, I know - I can hear you all already - most of these criteria would favour me. I'm sorry, but that's the way it's always been laid down. We did actually have a tie on points in 2008 - on that occasion, both Rob and Gary had two wins each so it went to total points scored, and Rob was rewarded for his honest endeavours in showing up every week.

We also had a very close-run event in 2003 when Dave Williamson (remember him?) came in with a stunning 44 point total on the last night, bringing him level with Les' Top 10 score. Dave was as relieved as Les was, however, when Les was handed the Quaich due to his 5 weekly wins that year to Dave's 2.

That's the rules - here's the what-ifs:

If I were to score 38 points and Ian didn't better 35, then I would win on countback.
If Keith were to score 40 points - and win - and Ian didn't better 35 and I didn't better 37, then Keith would win on countback.
Ian D needs 43 points at least - assuming nobody else did much.
John M needs at least 45 points.
If Sharpy shoots 40 points again, we're all f....d!

As usual, all the grisly details available at http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/

Handicap update

2010-08-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

As the season nears its end, it appears that everyone still has much to do to achieve their targets for this season. Here's the up to date list (target in brackets):

Bhagrath, Jas (15) 17.0
Black, Ken 16.5
Cook, Archie (11) 12.2
Corbett, Dan (16) 19.7
Dring, Ian 9.9
Edwards, Dave 10.8
Freeman, Syd 5.1
Fulford, Steve 17.6
Grant, Gary (3) 4.6
Gray, Keith (14) 14.8
Gray, Les (10) 11.5
Grigor, Malcolm 8.5
McRae, Ian 13.8
McWhinnie, John 14.5
Meaden, John (14) 17.8
Meany, Nigel (18)
Miller, Bill 17.4
Moir, Gordon (8) 10.9
Page, Ken 15.0
Pollard, Rob (12) 14.7
Riches, Hugh (11) 13.0
Salter, Harry (9) 10.5
Sharp, Ian (10) 11.4
Simcox, Richard 28.0
Simpson, Jack (20) 23.8
Stewart, Ian (9) 10.4
Street, Peter (14) 17.0
Taylor, Dick (11) 11.4

and please don't whine again, Gary - we know you've been injured!

Terry

2010-08-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Terry would have been 64 today - RiP. At Kingussie in 1999:

We still have a confirmed 15 for next week's outing - Cook, Corbett, Edmonds, Freeman, Grant, Gray, Gray, Grigor, McRae, Miller, Page, Pollard, Stewart, Street and Taylor.

Nigel Meany is still a possible, but haven't heard from Richard Simcox yet - how's the hand, Richard? Are you fit enough to play? We thought there might be a chance that Bob Cooper may join us as he's coming up for the 50th outing celebration at Boat of Garten, but apparently he won't arrive in time to play at Aboyne on the Friday.

Approximate tee time is 1pm - Malcolm to confirm with Aboyne GC. More details of teams etc next week.

Sunday golf

2010-08-23T11:55:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

As Syd said, it was a lovely morning yesterday and we had a nice friendly fourball - and the chance to take a couple of photos. Sitting on the new bench at the 10th tee, I watched Peter teeing off. First the downswing:

Nanoseconds later, the follow-through, with the tee flying off:

On the 13th tee, Syd decided to go for the big carry over the burn, only to be disturbed on his downswing by loud cackling from the Juniors in the practice area. You would have thought the adult coaches would have made sure the kids kept quiet and showed some respect for our elder statesman, wouldn't you? Can't get the staff, can you?:

Q 21

2010-08-19T07:29:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Who is this headless chicken driving off at the 1st hole?:

and who had a bit of a S.M. at the 5th hole and quickly tried to cover it up before the lensman could capture the moment?:

My first sighting of the new bench at the 10th tee last night:

Now the stats:

Les' first win in over 3 years
Les was the 12th separate weekly winner this year
Hugh, regrettably, notched up his 4th DoD this year
Ian Sharp was the only one of the leaders to improve his top 10 score

Every time the rest of us get near to him, Ian just edges away again. I had got to within a point a couple of weeks ago, but now the gap at the top has stretched again to 6 points. To present any kind of challenge, at least one more 40 pointer is required in the last couple of weeks - not impossible, but it looks unlikely.

The full details have already been published on the Yahoo site file and, realistically, here's the only ones with even an outside chance of winning the Quaich in this, its 20th year (dropping scores in brackets):

Sharp, Ian 377 (35)
Stewart, Ian 371 (35)
Gray, Keith 367 (34)
Dring, Ian 363 (33)
Meaden, John 362 (33)

Q20

2010-08-13T01:41:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Rob's trying to slide out of his reporting responsibilities and is probably purposely leaving his camera at home every week now, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with the Cynical One again.

Thursdays have certainly been much better than Wednesdays in recent weeks, and it was a beautiful evening for Q20. Rob was swinging nicely at the start - but he didn't quite hold the pose long enough for me at the 4th:

KAG's follow-through at the 6th was a bit pose-ish as well:

The fourball behind us seemed to lose an awful lot of ground, but it transpired that this group contained both the night's winner and DoD - here seen poles apart again:

The 3rd group quickly noticed my prying lens:

Rob and Keith both had tree trouble at the 10th, with Rob almost decapitating himself with a vicious rebound:

Back in the clubhouse I was demonstrating some of the features of my camera, and the subjects seemed a little stunned by it all:

We eventually spotted the late shift arriving at the Doo'cot with the sun sinking rapidly - and Ian "Big Boy" McRae thought he had got away with not being spotted at his usual place near the first tee - here he is haring back to the green:

This looks a bit like a Rear of the Year parade:

and finally, the presentation:

Now, briefly, the stats:

Jack went from last week's zero to this week's hero and recorded his first win since 7th May, 2008.
This is Dan's first season back with us - and his first official DoD.
Jack and John M both crossed the magic 40 points - their first this season - and John's first since 2007.
Jack was the 11th separate weekly winner this season.
We now have thirteen 40-pointers this season - level with last year, but virtually half of what we achieved in 2007.

Full details of the leader board available on the Yahoo site file, already posted. Mr. Sharp is still easing home.

New member

2010-08-06T02:23:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Recently added to the members on our Yahoo site is a name that many of the older squash players will remember - Raymond Orr. Raymond was a member of the squash club before heading off to all points of the compass in pursuit of the might dollar.

He's now retired and would like to join us on the golf course on a regular basis. Raymond is currently laid up, having recently had a knee operation, and he's not allowed to hit a golf ball until at least mid-September, so he won't be able to participate in this year's Quaich, but he hopes to at least be able to join us on Sunday mornings etc in a month or so.

For those that don't remember, or haven't met him, this was Raymond and his wife Myra, with Jo and I, at my 60th birthday party at the golf club last year:

I'm told Raymond hits a mighty long ball, albeit a tad wild - possible rival for Harry - or maybe Ian McRae?

Q19

2010-08-05T03:41:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

I was rather hoping that, for once, Rob would remember his camera and would save me the burden of supplying this week's photos, as well as the usual stats - but, no, the silly old b....r forgot again, so here goes.

It was a fine summer's evening at the start and there was a sight to behold on the 1st tee:

Not often seen in shorts, Mr. Salter - he says they were his Florida shorts - the Salters don't have many clothes to wear as they're homeless just now. Harry was later spotted wearing some rather blingy trainers in the bar - Green Flashes they were not.

And then there was the unusual sight of a son admiring his father's swing - at least I think that's what Graeme was doing as Ian teed off:

Behind them, Keith hitched up, ready for the battle:

At the 7th hole, Dick's skinny tee shot went through the gap to the back of the green and he gratefully chipped and putted to snaffle up a par 3 and then marched smartly off towards the 8th tee, where the bags are usually left. Not this time - he had forgotten he had taken his clubs round to where his tee shot had landed. A relatively innocent and generally unremarkable event, but the group behind us spotted what was going on and started whistling, waving and gesticulating at me - it was a bit like golf charades - I eventually sussed that Rob and Les were encouraging me to record the event for the blog - so I did:

The late evening shift was populated as usual by the younger, work-afflicted trio of Black, Riches and McRae. Here they are on the 15th tee:

It was a pretty slow round and we were waiting to play most of our shots. By the time we got to the 18th, Dick's body language was telling us all he wanted to get back in to the clubhouse - quickly:

And, finally, in accordance with well established tradition, last week's winner presented this week's with his prize ball:

Now the bit you've all been waiting for - the stats:

Steve's score was the highest of the season so far, beating Dan's early season 42 points.

Three 40 pointers in one evening was the best haul from our group for 2 years.

We have now had a total of eleven 40-pointers from 8 different people.

It was the joint best attendance of the season - 15.

It was Steve's first win since 10th May, 2006.

Jack joined the ranks of multiple DoD-ers this season - there are now 5 in this elite group.

There was a strange disparity in the the scores this week - one third of our group were better than CSS and got some kind of handicap reduction, whilst one third were below 30 points, leaving the remaining one third in the respectability corridor.

There was some movement in terms of places in the top 10 this week - Keith and Ian D each moved up a place at the expense of Dick and John M respectively. Keith and Ian D also had the biggest improvements in their top 10 scores - 9 and 10. I improved my top 10 by 4 points, but Ian Sh trumped that, bettering his score by 6 and thus moved further ahead at the top of the table. Ian now has a 3 point lead over me, with us both having 34 points to drop off next week.

Just 4 weeks left now and the full details of all the scores are on the Yahoo site - just click on the following link, if, like Harry, you would like to see scores other than the top 10 - http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/

For the rest, here's the quick version, with scores required to level the existing leading score of 372 in brackets:

Ian Sharp 372

Ian Stewart 369 (37)

Keith Gray 363 (41)

Dick Taylor 360 (46)

Ian Dring 357 (48)

John Meaden 353 (51)

Rob Pollard 348 (54)

Jack Simpson 339 (60)

Archie Cook 326 (66)

Ian McRae 323 (77)

I still think the winning total will be 380 +, so there's a lot of work to be done yet.

Piper

2010-08-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

This weekend's Piper had a couple of photos taken at BGC. First up was Les and Dick, taken at the Lord's Taverners' charity do:

Then there was the presentation of honorary membership to James Byrne:

Q18

2010-07-29T00:40:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

For those of us that left Aberdeen and the thunderous showers there, it looked like it might be the 3rd Wet Wednesday in a row, but the Banchory Bubble kept us all dry - bar a couple of very light showers.

The 2nd group were engaged in deep conversation on the 1st tee:

I was in the first group with Jack, Harry and Steve and, by the time we got to the 4th hole, there were portents of doom in the sky to the west:
The light showers around produced rainbows, enhancing the views:

Coincidentally, the first two groups turned out to be Jocks v Anglos and the home team triumphed in each fourball. The 3rd group could have worked out the same way, but didn't.

Other stats from the evening:

Hugh equalled Les' record and became the 2nd triple DoD-er this season.
I equalled John McW and became the 2nd triple winner this season.
Coincidentally, the last time I won (7th July), Hugh was also DoD then.
My first 40-pointer of the season - and only our group's 8th in all.
6 Jocks scored a total of 210 points - comfortably ahead of the Anglos' total of 201.
My gross score of 73 last night equalled Gary's record for this season - pity about my 3 putt at the last!
Just 5 weeks to go now.

So to the presentation of the prize ball:

There was some movement at the top of the leader board after this week's results. I improved my top 10 score by 7 to 365, but Ian's modest 34 points also improved his score by 2, so he kept his nose ahead at the top with a revised total of 366. Dick also improved by one point to 360 and lies in 3rd place, but Keith is making a late run - his 34 points improved his top 10 score by 6, and he still has a relatively low 31 points to drop off.

As usual, all the details are on the file on the Yahoo site at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/Summer%20Quaich%202010.xls

This is the current top 10, with scores required to level the current leading total of 366 in brackets:

Ian Sharp 366
Ian Stewart 365 (35)
Dick Taylor 360 (40)
Keith Gray 354 (43)
John Meaden 353 (45)
Ian Dring 347 (50)
Rob Pollard 341 (55)
Jack Simpson 339 (54)
Archie Cook 326 (60)
Ian McRae 321 (71)

Q17

2010-07-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

For the 2nd week in a row, Wednesday was a wash-out and the Quaich had to revert to Thursday. Good choice in the end - it was a beautiful evening and 9 of us showed up at various intervals to take part.

Archie had visitors arriving from Alaska and was under orders to be home sharp, so he had arranged an early tee time with Dan - and I managed to get away from work early enough to join them. As the arrangements for the evening were necessarily all a bit last-minute, and I'm always told that many of our group are not permanently attached to their PC's, I thought I'd revert to old technology and so I left a large A4 sheet, emblazoned with our logo, with the names and start times for the later groups on the desk of the pro shop - right next to where the score cards get picked up:

Nothing could be clearer surely? Well, not for our bunch of retards - they were as confused as ever - who's playing? Where's Ian? Some later claimed never to have seen said notice - and those who did confess to having seen it, apparently didn't tell the others until much later - and still couldn't understand what was going on!

Anyway, I had fun and games with my playing partners. Dan's tee shot at the first screamed off at a 90 degree angle straight towards the car park and buildings on the right. Of course, Dan never saw a thing - "where did that go?". He played a provisional but we walked over and found his ball - and it wasn't out of bounds:

It was a difficult shot and he only just managed to move it a few feet, so this was Dan's 3rd shot - still with 300 yards to go the green:

To be fair to Dan, he did get to the green eventually and even managed to scramble a point with a 6.

The next problem we had to witness - along with the shrieks - was Archie, who was having one of those evenings frequented with those not-to-be-mentioned types of shots. Poor man - he got pretty strung up about it - not surprisingly - but he battled it out to the end. On the 13th, I told him I would video his tee shot and this would then guarantee that he wouldn't s***k - and he didn't:

Back to Dan again - he duffed his tee shot at the same hole and then scurried off to play his 2nd as quickly as he could - probably trying to beat the prying lens of yours truly - but he failed:

Back to Archie's continuing woes - this time at the Doo'cot:

Wedding cake avoided, and he still manfully carried on to the last, where, yet again, there were shrieks of pain as his 2nd shot careered towards the greenkeepers sheds. A cursory look, then he stomped off:

It was still warm and sunny when we finished so we had our first pint on the balcony and we were joined by Eileen and their Alaskan guests, who then had a meal in the dining room, with Dan joining them. The next groups were still out on the course, so this left me sitting on the balcony on my own - Billy No Mates:

I wasn't the only one left in the lurch - poor Hugh couldn't get anyone to play with him at the later time of 6:15, so he had to make do with a few holes with some un-named female - or was it Jackie?

Ian McRae joined us for a beer and Ken Black came along too, then went out for some solo practice:

Finally, scores on the evening were:

Dick - 38
Me - 37
Les - 36
Dan - 35
Keith - 34
Gordon - 34
Steve - 31
Peter - 28
Archie - 20

The presentation was made to Dick on the balcony:

Now the stats:

Peter's first appearance in the Quaich this year, becoming the 23rd name on the 2010 database.
Aggregate points scored this season passed the 6,000 mark.
Archie's first DoD since April, 2008.
Dick's second win of the season with his highest score to date.
Dick's wins now match his DoD's for this season.
40 pointers still very thin on the ground - only 7 so far this season - well below average.

Just 6 weeks to go now and Ian is still well in front and remains firm favourite, but Dick and I narrowed the gap a little this evening. Dick moved back in to 2nd place and is now 5 points behind Ian, and needs 38 points next week to level Ian's existing total of 364. It's likely, however, that the winning total this season will be between 380 and 390 points, so there's still a bit of work to be done by everyone.

As usual, the full stats file is on the Yahoo site - http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/ - but here's the latest top 10 with dropping scores in brackets:

Sharp, Ian 364 (32)
Taylor, Dick 359 (33)
Stewart, Ian 358 (34)
Gray, Keith 348 (28)
Meaden, John 348 (32)
Dring, Ian 343 (30)
Pollard, Rob 340 (29)
Simpson, Jack 332 (27)
Cook, Archie 326 (20)
McRae, Ian 288

Nigel

2010-07-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Today's blog features the unmistakeably muscular frame of Mr. Meany, on another of his quick visits back to Blighty:

Nigel will be appearing in the Quaich again on Wednesday - playing with Dan and Gordon.

Q16

2010-07-17T08:40:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was a bit of a Les and Keith evening, photo-wise, on Thursday as 6 of us turned out for Q16, postponed by Wednesday's rain. First of all, Les had some trolley trouble (again) and was caught in the act of putting it all back together again after it all seemed to fall apart:

Then, eschewing the conventional, when he put one out of bounds at the 6th, using the garden gate was too much bother, so over the wall he went, and returned:

At the 7th hole, Keith pulled his tee shot and his ball ended up perched on top of the rim of the fairway bunker on the 6th, so he had to stand in the bunker and try and play his approach shot with the ball about thigh-high. I am taking this photo from the back of the 7th green:

Amazingly, he put this shot to 3 feet - but then, typically, he missed his par putt!

Les featured again when he was showing off his top with the sleeves that unzip - the only problem was that he couldn't do it himself, so he had to get Dick to help him undress:

Keith again - he found himself in a very similar situation at the 14th, but this time completely fluffed the shot:

It had turned in to a lovely evening and we thought we would pose at the 17th tee:

Les, Dick, Keith and I started a full hour before the work inflicted pair of Riches and McRae, but they raced round and finally caught up with us at the last, so it was a small sociable gathering in the clubhouse to present Ian with the winner's ball - his first since May last year:

Ian beat Keith on countback and became the 9th weekly winner this season. In that same period, there have been 10 DoD's, with Les completing the hat-trick this week.

It was the lowest turnout of the season, but apart from that, there is little to report statistically this week, other than the fact that the 3 youngsters comfortably out-scored the over 60's.

Dick couldn't improve on his top 10 total of 354 and remains 10 points behind Ian Sharp. I moved up to 2nd place (on countback), but Ian still looks very comfortable at the top of the table - a bit like Louis Oosthuizen - only difference beng that Ian doesn't exactly have Tiger and co chasing him!

Writing this early on Sunday morning, I'm speculating whether this could still be Spain's month - Nadal won at Wimbledon, Spain won the World Cup, they have 2 riders sitting 2nd and 3rd in the Tour de France, and Canizares is in 4th place in the Open on 7 under?

Anyway, back to the Quaich, the full file has already been posted to the Yahoo site (http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/), but the quick details of the top 10 are:

Sharp, Ian 364
Stewart, Ian 354
Taylor, Dick 354
Meaden, John 348
Dring, Ian 343
Pollard, Rob 340
Simpson, Jack 332
Gray, Keith 314
Cook, Archie 306
McRae, Ian 288

Summer Tour - final day

2010-07-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Monday morning brought the next casualties - firstly Dan's Powacaddy, then Keith, who had to stay in bed with a dickie tummy. Pity for Keith, but there was a slight upside for the rest of us as we were able to play in 3 fourballs and those with no interest in the outcome of the individual competition could at least have a little match to play for.

The first (Keith-less) team photo of the weekend:

We were back on the Hunting course again today - I'd negotiated this with the hotel as we were originally due to play the Priestman, but we were so disappointed with the work going on on the bunkers there, that we insisted they change our booking. It meant setting off a bit earlier, but this would at least mean we would all get home a bit earlier too.

At the 12th hole, Peter and I carved our drives right towards the pond. I finished up a yard or two short of the hazard, but Peter was inside the yellow posts with his ball perched precariously on the wooden sleeper lining the deep water:

He played a super recovery shot and could have made his par - but for some characteristically poor putting.

We were all pretty tired after walking 3 long courses and our group decided we would have a little rest at the 18th tee:

Jas got the nearest the pin at the 6th hole and Rob (!!!) got the longest drive at the 12th. Nobody hit the 17th green.

Today's winner was John again - he just pipped Syd on countback with 30 points. I was next with 28 points, So, what did this mean for the overall competition? Syd was clearly 3rd on 88 points, but John and I both finished on 94 points. John, however, took the trophy - on 2 counts - firstly, he had the better final round, and secondly, he had 2 daily wins to my one.

All that was left was for me to hand the trophy over to John:

This was John's 2nd win of the Summer Tour - his previous win coming in the first year the trophy was donated by Bob - Herefordshire in 2004. In the 10 years since 2001, I've won it 3 times, Peter twice and Jas, Dave and Syd once each. The mystery years are the first two outings in 1999 and 2000 - Ayr and the Highland tour - anyone know who won them?

Super outing - nice and relaxed - and not half as hard on the system as the week long Desert Classics and Iberian Cups! A few suggestions have already been made for the venue for next year's event, but there's plenty of time to decide - we can shop around for good deals. We don't normally book until nearer Christmas time anyway - unless, like this year, we get an exceptional offer from somewhere.

Summer Tour day 2

2010-07-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was a much brighter, but breezier day as we set out on the Hunting course, where the Senior pros had just played a couple of weeks ago. The course was in great condition and is much better than the Priestman - each hole is different - almost Augusta-like in places.

The wind was to take its toll on the scores, however - I was the only one to cross the respectability threshold with 31 points. JD was next best with 27, but the overall average was 7 strokes per person worse than Saturday.

We also had our first casualties of the weekend - Bill stumbled round 10 holes before walking off complaining of gripe and a dose of the s...s. Jas ran in to difficulty too at the 10th hole - but this time it was mechanical, due to operator error:

We did have time for a prize-giving this time, so Saturday's and Sunday's winners exchanged balls, with Syd appearing to look on longingly:

Archie and Dan took the NP prizes and Syd got the longest drive. We then had some time to kill before sitting down to an early pre-World Cup final dinner, so a few of us formed an escape committee and sloped off to the local pub for a couple of decent ales. We'd been to the Traveler's Rest the last time we were down and enjoyed it then, so we gave it another whirl:

Dinner next - and we had a rectangular table with a view of the TV for those who wanted to watch the Spain - Holland match. After dinner, we moved a bit closer to the TV for extra time, but it was already getting too late for some:

Dan had his automatic sensors on - he just managed to open his eyes in time:

Final over and time for a nightcap, we were served by a very well mannered waiter:

So the leader board after 2 days showed:

Me - 66
John - 64
Syd - 58

All to play for on the final day.

Summer Tour Day 1

2010-07-13T04:54:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

It was our 12th Summer Tour - and the first time we had ever returned to the same location - Slaley Hall, where we had gone in 2007. There was a record turnout of 13 for the event, including debutants Keith Gray and Ian McRae. The southern based contingent - George Cox, John Davies and Bob Cooper were all present and correct - although they did comment about leaving the sweltering south behind to travel to relatively cool and cloudy Northumbria. Bhagrath, Street, Gray and Pollard were all already based in northern England for different reasons, so their journey was a lot shorter than the rest of us.

Most of us arrived in good time for a relaxing lunch and some ale, although the Freeman, Cook and Corbett chariot was a bit touch and go, having left Banchory a full 2 hours later than Bill, Ian and I did. The first day's play was on the Priestman course, which we had played once back in 2007. The layout's pretty good but they were doing a tremendous amount of work on their bunkers and this, allied to the occasional shower at the start, had an off putting effect. Here's a typical scene as Archie retrieves his ball from the G.U.R. at the short 3rd hole:

The rough was pretty severe and there was a huge premium for staying on the fairway as Archie (again) found out:

It was a pretty hectic finish to get off the course, showered and changed for dinner at 7:30 pm - and there was no time for prize-giving, but the day's honours went to John, with an impressive 37 points. I was next with 35, with Syd and Rob both on 33, Dan & Keith 32, and Jas 31 - pretty good scoring overall.

NP's went to Bob and Syd and I won the longest drive at the 18th.

There was the slightly unusual/never before seen image of a waiter serving Jas a half pint at dinner - he was promptly scolded of course. A couple of photos were taken after dinner - and for those who can't remember/don't know Bob, here he is:

Likewise, here's John and George having a laugh:

2010-07-08T00:57:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

First the photos - here's the second group stepping on to the 7th tee:

A rather forlorn Rob hunting for his ball in the hay at the 8th hole:

The rest of the second group also ball hunting at the 8th:

Hugh at the back of the 12th green:

Rob presents me with the winner's ball:

Now the stats:

My 2nd win of the season, matching Archie, Keith and Ian, but one behind John McW.
Hugh's second DoD, joining Dick, Rob and Les in this ignominious stat.
There have been 8 separate winners in the 14 weeks played to date.
In that same time, we've had 10 separate DoD's.
Hugh, Dick and I have both weekly wins and DoD's to our names.
From those that have made more than a handful of appearances, only Jas, Jack and Ian D have still to get their name at the top or bottom of the table (i.e. win or DoD).
From those regulars, Ian D has the narrowest range of scores - 7 (30 to 37).
The first time the attendance has been in single figures this season.
Dick's 100% attendance record has gone - the last to do so.
The 4 Jocks comfortably beat the 4 Anglos last night.

Ian has established a very healthy lead, with another 8 weeks to go to improve his current top 10 score of 364. Another 22 points required to match last year's winning total of 386. Here's the current top 10 with scores to drop next week in brackets (full file details on the Yahoo site at http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/BanchorySquashVeteransGolf/files/Summer%20Quaich/):

Ian Sharp 364 (32)
Dick Taylor 354 (33)
Ian Stewart 352 (31)
John Meaden 348 (32)
Ian Dring 343 (30)
Rob Pollard 340 (29)
Jack Simpson 332 (27)
Archie Cook 306
Keith Gray 277
Ian McRae 251

I've also calculated what all those who have played 10 already have to score to level Ian's current total of 364 - assuming it is all done in just one week:

Dick 43
Me 43
John M 48
Ian D 51
Rob 53
Jack 59

Q14

2010-07-04T09:48:00.001-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Keith got his round going at the 6th when he holed his approach shot for an unlikely eagle - and 5 points - following a poorish drive and a nondescript 2nd. He was very happy to pose for the camera:

He was still going well on the back nine, but got a bit nervous as he got nearer the end - viz the Doo'cot:

Back in the clubhouse, Les showed off the scars he got from the undergrowth:

Sharp and Simpson were also displaying their knees:

and so to the double presentation - John to Keith and Keith, retrospectively, to John:

Now the stats:

Second win in 15 days for Keith
Dick's 2nd DoD of the season
Dick's 29 points equalled Rob's high DoD score of the season
The overall average score of 34.9 was the highest of the season
Keith notched up our 7th 40-pointer of the year

The leader board is becoming more revealing as we approach the final third of the season. Ian went back to the top of the table, and I managed to split up the Meaden/Dring head to head battle for 3rd place. Watch out, however, for Keith, Dan and Archie who have yet to complete the 10 round minimum - and not to forget John McWhinnie either, who already has 3 wins and two 40 pointers to his name. Still 9 weeks left and all to play for:

Full details on the Yahoo site, but here's the top 10 for now, with next week's dropping scores in brackets:

1 Sharp, Ian 358 (31)
2 Taylor, Dick 354 (33)
3 Meaden, John 345 (32)
4 Stewart, Ian 344 (30)
5 Dring, Ian 343 (30)
6 Pollard, Rob 334 (26)
7 Simpson, Jack 332 (27)
8 Cook, Archie 306
9 Gray, Keith 277
10 Corbett, Daniel 241

Balmoral postscript

2010-06-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

From http://bsvgolf.blogspot.com/

Short video of Dick's tee shot at 11th last night - has to be viewed directly from the blog: