Today was our first counting individual event of the 2025 season and I want to say a couple of thanks to begin with.
- Thanks for the amount of entrants. 157 played today, that’s a 13% increase on last years field and a 43% uplift on 2023 for the same event.
- Digital scorecard completion. Great job for the first time using it this way for over 6 months. one or 2 queries came my way but all simple stuff and everything done online, superb, I could have posted these results a couple of hours ago had I not been doing the garden! Just be aware of matching your markers score to your actual score when finalising your score.
Course Analysis
I didn’t play today and if I hadn’t looked at the weather I could have known the wind direction just from the live leaderboard and what the hole by hole rankings tell me. The 15th was the hardest hole today playing almost 1 and 3/4 shots over it’s par with only 12 players managing a par there. The 10th was the second toughest, like 15 nothing better than a par and only 18 pars there, just over 10% of the field. The 12th did yield 5 birdies but still played as the 3rd hardest hole today at 1.24 over it’s par of 4.
The 5th and 7th were the 2 easiest holes, both giving up 13 birdies playing 0.55 and 0.63 over their respective pars of 4 and 3.
The average gross score today was 89.11. The back 9 playing a shot tougher than the front despite it being par 35 to the front 9s par 36.
The Members Survey
Eh?, sorry?, the members survey in a results email…..I reference the member survey fairly frequently and to date it’s predominantly been about the clubhouse improvements we’ve implemented but you also told us the course was “too hard”. You’ll have noticed that the tee at the 3rd, whilst a bit harder to get to, was in the higher up position today. We’re looking to experiment with that tee (and others) to understand if that makes the 3rd a bit easier than it has been historically from the current and last medal tee. Although many factors will contribute to the scoring at the hole, it played the 4th most difficult today when it is rarely outside the top 2 most difficult holes week to week.
The greens committee working with Kevin and his team are looking to make some changes to the playability of the course, you’ll have seen wider fairways being lined up during the winter and in time when we have proper growth hopefully you’ll start to notice some differences to the surrounds of greens too, offering you more variety around the greens.
The Results
Well somebody has been doing some practice over the winter. Well done to our Bob Burns Quaich 2025 winner Lee Deehan who not only had the best score today but beat his previous best score in a competitive round by 7 (at Caldwell 2 years ago) and beat his previous best competitive round at Fereneze by a huge 17 shots. Looking forward to seeing what that handicap cut looks like tomorrow. No zero pointers and 3 pars at the par 3s one of the keys to Lee’s success.
In second spot was Craig Shaw….and all this time Ian McArthur’s been telling me he’s the real reason him and Shawsy are so successful in the doubles, well not on today’s showings he’s not! Craig led most of the day with an excellent gross 77 for nett 66 and 41 points, missing out by 1 to Lee. One of the few birdies at 12 today for 4 points helped Craig deliver a better back 9 than front 9, going against the grain of the field.
Nice to see one of the Pierotti’s is competitive…and it’s not our retail guru David! Son Andrew bounced back superbly after a snowman at the first to record 40 points with some really consistent scoring and picking up points at most holes except 1 and 15 where he had another 8 but showed some character again to record 8 points for the last 3 holes.
Stuart Dickson, Jim Boyd and Russell Aird all tied on 39 points. Big Russell got off to a flyer (I’m sad, I check in to the leaderboard through the day even when I’m not playing) turning in 42 parring all the Par 5s for net 4 points each time, very impressive, not so impressive was his back 9 which had a 3,4,5,6,7,8 & 9 on it! Jim scored at every hole, very consistent and mirrored the average with a decent front 9 and a few more shots on the back 9.
Stuart likes the early season stuff, he won Medal 1 last year and is off to a good start again this season, he carded a superb best of the day gross 69. 3 birdies and just 1 bogey today is excellent playing.
No real surprise that the class winners were Stuart, Craig and Lee.
The big financial winner of the day was John McBurney, he can sit gazing into the computer in the Pro Shop when he’s covering it on Monday looking at the £55 he got for his 2 at the 7th, the only one of it’s kind in 3rd class.
You can find full results and pay outs here at the event website. I’m also going to start saving down these round reports there (once I work out how)
Thanks and have a fine Easter Sunday….please note no egg puns here!