We awoke to see overnight rain still spitting away but the forecast was for it to clear by early/mid-morning - and it did. Certainly not the best day of the week but no problem for golf. We had forgotten what warm, gentle rain felt like!
It was shoot-out at the OK Corral day. I was paired with Syd and Malcolm was in the second group and they were the three protagonists - or so we thought. What was occupying our minds even more, however, was the state of the OAP's v Whippersnappers match, which was all square. There had been some banter - taunting even - the night before and most felt that Syd and I were a shoe-in against Nigel and Keith in the first match out. Likewise, Malcolm and Ken were expected to take care of the out of form pairing of Jas and Dick, so it looked like it would all come down to the last match between Dan and Peter v Ian and Bill. Ian had been spraying them all week so wasn't expected to make much of a contribution - but how wrong this assumption was to turn out.
Nigel started like a train - birdie at the 1st, par at the second - 7 points in the bag already, and he went on to shoot 20 points on the front nine, taking he and Keith in to a surprise 2 hole lead over Syd and I. This, however, was like writing their own death warrant as Syd steeled himself and shot level par on the back nine - 21 points in all - to lead us to the much predicted win for the OAP's.
Match 2 went much as planned and so, as predicted, the last match was the key and Ian finally came out of his slumber to shoot an amazing, best of the week 40 points, which naturally gave the Whippersnappers the win they required to take the honours overall for the week.
Jas elected to do the presentation that evening to allow time to buy the prizes and here he is presenting the ball to Ian:
Rolling the clock back to the race for the trophy, it turned out to be between Syd and I, as Malcolm was unable to improve on his second lowest score. I had started the day with a 2 point lead over Syd and I also had a lower score to drop off, so effectively, I had a potential 5 point lead. At the turn, the position hadn't changed, but suddenly Syd turned on the after-burners and started holing some great putts, and he took a one point lead on to the last tee. I really needed him to screw up and hope that I could play the hole well, but it wasn't to be, and Syd made an easy par whilst I blobbed.
Syd's 36 point total might have made hime a daily winner on other days, but, on this occasion he was only 3rd as Nigel came in with 37 points as well as Ian's 40 points. Not that Syd was worrying - he had taken the main prize again - for the 3rd year in a row, taking his total DC wins up to 5, equalling Malcolm's total. Here's Syd receiving the trophy from me:
There were lots of other prizes and the usual bewildering collection of stats for the week, plus the usual slide shows, but the other competition we run is the Eclectic and this was won by DC debutant Bill with 52 points - 2 points better than me. Bill then stood up and made an amusing short speech and said he would like to present a special prize to whoever was Dunce of the Week, with the intention that the recipient bring it back next year and pass it to the next DoW. It was a Homer Simpson silk golf tie:
The race for DoW was close fought - both Dan and Jas ended up with 92 points, but as Jas had been DoD 3 times to Dan's one, he took the award and here's Bill presenting it to him:
After that, the guys presented me with a nice shirt for doing the organising:
Great week. More to follow.
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