Organiser Paul Jones and Captain Richard Westergreen-Thorne on the JOG 1st with their Gog Magog opponents
Organiser Paul Jones reports
Given the recent unpredictable British Summertime weather I checked the forecast on Monday evening and it looked promising. However, it did suggest that there was a slight chance that some of us might get wet. So I was quite alarmed when early on Tuesday morning I put my gear into the car that this horrible "wet rain" was falling, so I made sure my waterproofs were in my bag and got wet doing so. I set off with the windscreen wipers on the intermittent setting struggling to shift the rain, not looking forward to playing in the rain yet again. By the time I pulled into the car park the rain had almost stopped and when I reappeared about half an hour later it had mercifully ceased and it turned into a lovely day to play golf.
All players from both teams arrived in good time, although when I got home there was a voice message from one of our guys saying "the traffic was awful". Since I was caught up in admin (a hint for any future organisers take some scorecards home with you a day or two before the match and write them out at home) I didn't notice what time the straggler arrived so my tardy extraction of his voicemail message was the only indication of any problems Be honest guys, how many of you have ever uttered the words "the traffic was awful" when a five minute delay on the road meant that you turned up somewhere half an hour late.
Anyway enough of my timekeeping confessions, the golf is what you want to read about.
Our captain Richard Westergreen-Thorne was paired with myself, Paul Jones (my reward for acting as organiser) and we got the John O'Gaunt team off to steady start as our match finished tied *(or all square" for those traditionalists amongst you).
We were pitted against their organiser Allan, a very competent single figure handicapper, and their club Captain Dennis who also had a single figure handicap index but was not quite as consistent as Allan. However, Dennis made a few valuable contributions like parring the third hole after hitting his tee shot 70 yards. Then on the next hole, Gog's nearest the pin hole, after Richard and I had missed the green, Dennis put his tee shot to within ten inches of the hole. Richard had a very difficult chip from the right side of the green and duly but unsuccessfully tried to secure a half. I was about six foot short of the green and pulled out the "Texas Wedge" and holed out for a important half. Our match was always tight with neither team ever getting more than 1 up. There was a fair sprinkling of good golf and by the ninth hole, which Richard birdied to get us level, all four players had recorded at least one gross birdie. The only other point of note is that I won the nearest the pin on the 16th which meant both nearest the pins were won by the first group.
The other matches were generally close, not a dog licence in sight, and the full results making up a 6.5 to 1.5 victory for John O Gaunt were:
Richard Westergreen-Thorne and Paul Jones: Halved
Nigel Underwood and Paul Dobson: won 3 & 2.
Jed Isbell and Chris Roy: won 1 up
Rob Ebsworth and Steve Mathers: won 3 & 2
Steve Luckman and Keith Howlett: won 5 & 4
David McNair and Mehmet Osman: lost 3 & 1
Paul Jeeves and Rob Isaacson: won 3 & 2
Andrew Lawrence and Tony Lloyd: won 4 & 2
It's worth mentioning that this match was the first time that we have been granted permission to start from 2 different tees (1st and 17th) and this appeared to work very well, meaning we were able to eat about half an hour earlier and were away from the club before the traffic made us all late home blaming the traffic. Thank you to those who turned up to make sure that the two tee start worked as well as it did.
We enjoyed a lovely meal and Paula and her team kept up the high standard of food that we at John O'Gaunt have become used to.
We wished our opponents a safe journey home and look forward to the return fixture in September.
* Footnote A match that was previously recorded as all square is now ‘tied’, though a tied hole can still be known as “halved”. The logic behind the change appeared to be about employing more commonly used language, making the game easier for a casual audience to understand ?
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