Tuesday, Jan. 24, Crystal Bay – Stableford
Twenty-three Tropical golfers met at BJ’s Lodge for a fill-up of whatever was wanted, and all the cars then headed out to Crystal Bay (still for sale!), which was found to be in good to very good condition. The greens are always tough to navigate here but don’t confuse that with poor condition. You just have to be good at putting and an experienced caddie helps.
This week we got the B & C courses and we hadn’t seen much of the B-course in a long while, and indeed many people who play Crystal Bay regularly didn’t remember the holes. The B-course is a bit harder than the other two, and quite scenic.
The course usually gives up high stableford scores, but this time the Tropical golfers outdid themselves. In the A-Flight (0-18), Mashi Kaneta (H/cap 17) roared back to life with a towering 42 points! Going 21+21 showed he was in complete control this day, and was six shots clear of Tom Herrington (15) and Brian Gabe (18), with Tom taking second on a count back.
In B-Flight (22+) if you didn’t have a “4” as the first number of your score it wasn’t worth even thinking of getting called at the presentation. Dave Cooper (24) continued his impeccable run with a numbing 42 points. Next came two players with 41, Gorden Clegg (36) winning the tie-breaker over Dick Warberg (23) on the back-nine.
Near Pins: Paul Weatherley, Landis Brooks, Andre Van Dyk, Dick Warberg.
Long Putts: Carole Kubicki, Mashi Kaneta.
Best Nines (non-winner): Torsten Bischoff (19pts), Mick Coghlan (18pts)
Friday, Jan. 27, Royal Lakeside – Stableford
It’s a long way to Royal Lakeside but that said, we treat it like any other course and we had a really big turnout this day.
You either like the course or you do not and today a high wind added to the difficulty. With it being so open winds are expected but the course itself is not difficult if you hit the ball straight. Well yes, that makes it difficult to accomplish in a strong and on this day good scores were not expected to be the norm. The layout itself was not in bad condition and the greens were difficult but fair, all in all a fine day out.
Round over it was into cars for the trip back. Back at BJ’s it was soon into the results and in the A Flight (0-21) the winner was Mashi Kaneta with 38 points ahead of Bob Britton in second with 37. We then had a count back on 36 points that saw Landis Brooks in third and Deryn Neufeld fourth.
Gordon Clegg was the winner in the B Flight was with 40 points, ahead of Dave Cooper in second with 37 while in third was Don Carmody with 36 points and fourth spot was occupied by Graham Buckingham with 33.
Near Pins: Nigel Perry, Brian Parish, John Davis, Graham Buckingham.
Long Putts: Dave Cooper, Gordon Clegg.
Best Nines (non-winner): Michael Bent (19pts), Nigel Perry (22pts).
