Our new 2023 Captain of Captains, David Bate, welcomed 62 Captains to his home club, Mendip Spring Golf Club, on Thursday 6th April for the first event of the 2023 Somerset Golf Captains season.
A last-minute change to the start sheet was no real surprise – but cracking the enigma code-like challenge of a shotgun start, allocating changing facilities for everyone and somehow working around a Ladies County knock-out match, proved more difficult!
The weather was equally demanding with strong winds and some very heavy downpours. The traditional four-ball better ball format was some solace, but the scoring reflected the well-known difficulty of the course and the occasionally terrible weather.
Despite the difficulties, the Captains enjoyed a tremendous day, catching up with old friends and making new ones in the traditional curtain raiser for the season. Andrew Cardus-Hall, Mendip Spring Golf Club Captain, welcomed everyone to the Club and David Bate, as Captain Elect, outlined the revised plans for tee times, dinner and the AGM which was set to conclude the day’s proceedings.
The SGC outgoing President, Bob Acland, 2022 Captain of Captains Rob Ford, Captain Elect, David Bate and Home Captain, Andrew Cardus-Hall, had the privilege of using the first tee as their start point in the shotgun start. Elsewhere Captains spread out towards their allocated tees like Dad’s Army on manoeuvres before our volunteer for the day, Geoff Rooke from Cannington, sounded the klaxon for the golf to start. Geoff did a tremendous job patrolling the course, deciphering wet and illegible nearest the pin markers and doing his best to help those coming to the 1st tee to slot in where they could. Our sincere thanks to Geoff for all his help and for enduring the worst of the weather on his buggy! We look forward to seeing him on the course soon.
We were very grateful to the Club to have first use of the grass tees for this season and despite the rain’s attempts to spoil our day, the course held up well. As ever, Mendip Spring proved a stern test, and it was clear from the start that few if any teams would be scoring forty points or more given the conditions.
After the golf, the Captains dried out and charged their glasses before sitting down to a Somerset Pork meal with fresh vegetables followed by a delicious Apple Crumble, coffee and mints. This was followed by the AGM (report on the web site) and the prize-giving for the day.
As it turned out, an outstanding round of 41 points from Graham Hewlett and Dougie Woods from Worlebury was easily good enough to win from a group of pairs with 39 points resulting in the other places all being decided on the back nine or the back six – testing the organisers even further!
Runners-up were Kevin Blakeley and retiring Secretary John Beer, a very popular result with the audience, followed by Phil Slater and Geoff Spinks in third place, Phil Barrett and Harold Lidbitter in fourth and Paul Gardiner and Phil Stone in fifth.
The skills prizes on the five par 3s were won by Graham Load, Peter Dawson, Keri Allchurch, Mike How and David Bate. Consolation prizes were given to Iain Robertson and Kevin Jackson who retired due to a traffic jam on the first tee and Maddie Casson and Jeff Saunders who narrowly beat a number of other teams to the lowest total for the day.
We would like to thank Mendip Spring Golf Club for their generous hospitality and support which enabled us to run a successful large golf event, our AGM and a dinner where we could catch up with old friends and fellow Captains.
The full results can be found here: https://bit.ly/SGC_spring23
