Phoenix Members Golf Society
With our group numbers growing week by week the competition is getting tougher. We were holding talks regarding how difficult it is for the lower handicappers to score the magic 40 points whilst the longer handicappers will have their 5 hours of fame and return scores of 40 points or better. Well, that theory nearly went out of the window on Friday, July 26 when Gerd Riedler scored a fantastic gross 75 playing from a handicap of 6 to return 39 points. Brilliant!
Happily it was enough to give Gerd first place by four shots from our very own ‘Mr. Consistency’ Mukesh Thakkar, who scored his usual 35 points. Joint third were Pierre Bietry and Keith Johnston with 32 points each and in joint fourth came the scribe and Arthur Barrett, also with 32 points but with inferior back nine’s.
Tuesday’s winners pose with the staff at The Relax Bar.
Keith Johnston was the recipient of the free massage lucky draw prize with his son Ben Johnston claiming the free drink. Both these prizes are donated by our hosts The Relax Bar at Ban Amphur. The final lucky draw prize of 50 baht went to Bill Hewitt.
So onto our main day on Tuesday, July 30, and this being the last day of the month for our society meant that it was also the last day for contenders of the Blue Olive league voucher to improve on their previous scores.
There were about 5 players that could have overtaken Arthur Busch who was standing on a total of 78 points from his best two games. David Lusha was the most probable as hE only needed to score 37 points to beat Arthur, with John Bartley needing 39 and myself and John Clift needing a score of 40 or better. All of this, of course was assuming Arthur did not score more than 37 points.
Well David Lusha started like a train with a birdie at the first for 4 points and an eagle 3 at the second for another 5 points. Sadly David fell away badly and only recorded a total of 34 to leave him down the field. John Clift failed to threaten the leaders and I missed a short putt on the last which would have given me the 40 points I needed. So I ended up level with Arthur on 78 points.
John Bartley stole the whole day by shooting the 39 points he required to win the Blue Olive voucher, with a total of 79 points, but more important than that was that his back nine was superior to mine so it meant he also won the Trattoria Italiana end of the month voucher as well.
Third place was awarded to Mukesh Thakkar with 36 points and in fourth was Stuart Gordon, who after a horrendous front nine of only 11 points recorded 22 on the back to finish with 33.
Near pin awards went to Peter Harris, David Lusha, Mukesh Thakkar and Stuart Gordon.
None of us could believe that John Bartley was not among the near pin winners but not to be outdone guess whose name came out for the free massage lucky draw? Yes you guessed, John Bartley. Newcomer Volker Rech claimed the free drink and a consolation of 50 baht went to Harvey Trewarn.
With a happy time being had by all at the Relax Bar we wondered home totally relaxed after a great day out on the fairways of Phoenix.
