Westgate & Birchington (5 Clubs) - Thu 16th Dec 2021

Report

BGS Christmas Special Report...

Yesterday was the annual 5-club challenge at the little gem of a course that is Westgate & Birchington.  A fair & relatively warm December day greeted us and we even saw the sun for a few holes.  The Club looked after us well and we were even able to get going a few minutes early.   
Birthday Boy, Gary Fairhall led us off in Group 1 surrounded by 3 of our elder statesmen, but no birthday treats for Gary who got beat by all three of them. Even Geoff & Billy, with 37 points each, didn’t break into our top 3 however.  Despite a Handicap reduced by 1 shot, Phil Boxall, our winner at Sittingbourne, & Carl Bolton, our Broome Park winner, both scored well. Phil had 37pts and Carl had 38pts but both missed out on a top 3 finish.
3rd was Terry Porter with 38pts.
2nd was Rich Epps with 39pts.
1st was Peter K with 40pts.  

As it’s the Christmas game we had a ‘nearest the pin’ competition on every hole: the winners were: Gerry, Arthur, Carl x2, Peter K, Mark Caldwell – apparently, he got a two on it…, Birthday Boy Gary Fairhall, & Geoff Richman – who all won a sleeve of Callaway balls.
Three quarters of our 24 golfers scored 30pts or more today… well played everyone.
Most golf went to Aaron Green, on his first outing with us, hopefully it won’t have put him off too much. Although maybe his Father-in-law, Mark Caldwell, has already done that by mentioning his birdie 2, judging on how often he mentioned it in the clubhouse later… but since it’s Christmas we gave all the 2’s a prize – Mark Caldwell (Did you know he had a 2?), Phil Boxall, & Mark Hall, who was celebrating his record points score of 28 – you’ll keep improving if you stick with us, Mark!

[Apparently, it’s a long-standing tradition that if you’re not around for the results then you fore-go your prize… so the three sleeves of balls left over from the Nearest the Pins went to the 2’s winners… Nice work Carl!!]

Finally, with 6 teams of 4 we indulged in a team competition… so with blue balls at the ready we did our best to not lose them… well all of us but Geoff, who apparently lost it on the last hole… which is a £3 fine & was the only fine of the day!!
The winning team, with 40pts, shared £24 between them (£1 each from us all): well played Terry, Jon, Steve Taylor & Rich.  Also, well done to all those who came with a Christmas Hat or jumper and earned your teams a bonus point... (Steve Evans, Steve Rowe, Ian Lodge, & Mark Caldwell - Anyone know he had a 2?) A big thankyou to Mark for getting the cards in order in the clubhouse, but a reminder to everyone to make sure you add up the scores for front 9 and the back 9 to make that job easier, particularly when we need to use countback to decide positions - I can feel some fines being given out for that in 2022!!  

Have a happy & peaceful Christmas everyone & get your muddy gear ready for Canterbury on January 20th 2022.