By Brendan Smith
Golf continued on its merry way recently, on a rapidly drying out Royal Nyngan, there’s meant to be a little rain on the horizon, so hopefully now we’re just into autumn things might start to turn around after a dreadfully dry and hot run through spring and summer.
Saying that, the course has held up unbelievably well throughout and would easily be in the best nick it’s ever been in with the little amount of rainfall we have received over the last six months.
As always, the week kicked off with the Wednesday nine-hole stableford on February 26.
Lisa Herbert was the winner with 18 points. Runner-up with 14 points was Dick McGuinness, while Viv Pateman hung on for third with 13 points.
Graham Tomek was lucky enough to pick up the nearest the pin prize.
Now school has resumed, we’ve lost a few of our regular Wednesday ‘junior’ golfers, but I’m sure they’ll be back the first chance they get during the holidays. The kids who played were a pleasure to have around the club, they were always polite, well-mannered and certainly enjoyed mixing it with the ‘oldies’.
Saturday’s Par event
On Saturday, March 1, we played everyone’s least favourite format an 18-hole par event, however this didn’t deter Marina Kennedy who had a fantastic score of plus five (+5).
Marina got off to a flyer, starting with four pluses on her first four holes, and actually got to + 6 at one stage in her round, before finishing +5 for her round. A great round Marina!! Cameron Bourke finished runner-up with +1, while Toby Smith picked up third prize with -1.
Nearest the pin winners for the day were; Toby Smith on the second, Marina played a lovely shot over the water on her favourite hole to get the pin on the fourth, Sir Les Dorrington who had a tough day around the course was nearest on the 14th, Nyngan’s most eligible bachelor Brett Rope played two nice shots to the 16th to win the pin there, while Brendan Smith won the 17th.
Sunday’s Ambrose
Sunday’s two-person ambrose on March 2 again attracted a great sized field with 48 golfers lining up.
Lining up to pay was as close most got to seeing any of the prizes up for grabs, with one of Nyngan’s power couples Cameron Bourke and Petria Quarmby absolutely poleaxing the rest of the field with a sensational season low score of 27.00 nett, making it a clean sweep for the girls for the week, cleaning up the Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday comps. Camo and Petria started their round with a bogey on the sixth, but then birdied their next four holes (seventh, eighth, ninth, first) on the bounce, and despite another bogey on the tricky third, managed to finish two-under par for their round, bloody good golf by both of you!
Runners-up were Mitchell Williams and Brendan Smith with a score of 28.75 nett, which was a nice round also, but clearly no match for the winners.
Third place went to Mandy Martin and Marina Kennedy with 29.75 nett. Anthony Griffiths and Toby Smith combined to take home fourth prize with30.25 nett, while Jak Jeffery and Tony Lewis were fifth with 30.75 nett.
The nearest the pins were just as hotly contested, and probably in a first for the club, all pin winners finished with birdies. Mitchell Williams and Brendan Smith won the nearest in two shots on the first after King put it only 85cm from the flag, Brendan Smith picked up the second, Mark Keighran played a cracker over the cowal to set up birdie on the fourth, Camo and Petria combined to put it only 57cm from the flag on the eighth in two shots, while Camo then put it on the 200m always difficult ninth, and then duly sunk the putt, there were reports his tee shot ricocheted off the scraper and would have ended up in the clubhouse otherwise, but this hasn’t been confirmed as of yet.
A massive, massive thanks to everyone who has supported our Sunday comps during summer, with fields usually around the 50 players plus mark (60 players being our best sized field this summer), which really is fantastic for a club our size.
The 2025 program has just about been finalised, we were waiting on a few of the local clubs we support each year to confirm their Open Day dates for 2025. It’s a jam-packed program again this year, with plenty for everyone.
Twilight Golf
Meanwhile in twilight golf, another fantastic week has been run and won with 94 players hitting the fairways.
Twelve (12) teams are within six points of the lead, with an interesting final three rounds ahead.
A reminder, no subs can be used during the final three rounds.
Round 20 weekly winners with a massive score of 50 points was the Black-Smiths. Congratulations to the team of Luke Smith, Nok, Sonia and Will Black.
The leaderboard top 10 after round 20 is: CGD Earthscaping (26), Neill Earthmoving (25), Stanton Building (24), Hack-Attack (24), Lister’s Lunatics (23), Sheather’s Mobile Contracting (23), Daniel Martin Plumbing (22), Crack-N-Plumbers (21), Foodoworks (21), Royden’s Rockers (21).
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