Sunday 24th
March 2019 produced some good golfing weather, sunshine, a cool 8-10C
(depending on when you played) with a one-club westerly breeze keeping
matters on the cool side.
The 4 CRT
teams each produced 5 playing pairs for the Scramble round, giving 20 pairs
arranged in 10 flight of 2 pairs. Start times were from 10:00 am to
13:00. The scramble is fun but a slow format, needing a good 4 hours for
the slower players. The handicapping rules, changed in 2017, demanded
that each pair played of the exact handicap (strokes received) of the better
player with the lower handicap. This is to avoid too much banditry with good
players getting a boost from a high handicappers. No of course nobody in
our club would exploit such a strategy would they? The short answer
is YES, all captains would welcome the opportunity, hence the rule. This change in strokes received caused some interesting conversations and various people played from the red tees for the first time.
It was great that some new golfers participated and enjoyed themselves even playing in their first competition.
The format
is (or should be), well known. Each player in a pair takes his or her shot ,
the pair select the better of the two and then both play on from there, placing
on the fairway and a knee-drop in the no-fairway areas. The format is not
qualifying.
The results
on the day were not bad, yielding a maximum score of 44 Stableford points and a
minimum of 27. The best score ( 44 from Clare Bingham and Rob Jansen) and
the second best (Salim Ansari and Gary Gould) of 43 ensured Clare’s Babes and
the Boys the first place on the day with 87 points. The other three teams
all had lower scores but were all very close to each other. Reno’s
Fridays men had 82 to give second place, Marja’s Mulligans had 81 and
Alex’s Andy Caps are in 4th place on 80. Obviously an
interesting source of inspiration and effort for the future rounds with
everything to play for to prevent the magnificent trophy residing for the
second year running in the Sassenheim den of the B & B’s.
Interesting the B&B’s deserved their first place with an average pair score
of 41.1 Stableford points. The median score (equal scores above and below
was 39 points and the mode (the most popular score) was also 39.
The standard deviation was low (for golf events) at 4.4 and the average score
just below 38 points.
Thanks to Rod for putting together the results and providing the report.
