Match report

2005 Spring meeting

Date - 6th May 2005
Venue – Thetford Golf Club
Attendance – 48
Weather – Fine weather with light to moderate wind

The spring meeting this year was held on the 6th of May at Thetford Golf Club. 48 players were competing: 44 were members of the society, 2 represented St Audrey's and 2 players representing our sponsors - Micromuse, whom are suppliers of platform management software to BT.

Thetford is a lovely course, set amongst the trees of Thetford forest. The course is dotted with pine, oak and birch trees and an abundance of scented gorse broom and heather which greeted those who ventured away from the fairways. The golf course was in very good condition, but the breeze made some of the holes play very long. The course is not particularly tight but it does pay to stay on the fairways and avoid your next shot being blocked by the trees. The greens were in good condition and were true but did have some slight variations in speed and subtle borrows which made some putts very challenging.
Due to the number of players we started from 2 tees, the 1st and the 14th, both of which are fortunately adjacent to the clubhouse. Overall the pace of the round for the last pairings was slow, and the final groups took nearly five hours to get around the course. This is unfortunate and limited the time for lunch for the later players. Lunch itself consisted of soup and sandwiches, before heading out for the afternoon's singles competition. This was played in three-balls off the first and fourteenth tees and generally went round a bit quicker, although the later groups off one of the tees took five hours to go round.

In the evening we were served an excellent meal of medallions of pork with mild mustard sauce, followed by plum crumble, which went down very well. This was followed by the presentation of prizes for all the winners of the day. The winners of last year's knockout competitions were announced but were practicing their golf in France, so the presentations were delayed.

Thanks to our sponsors, Micromuse, the prize table was very impressive. The 4BBB competition had a runaway winning pair of John Carlaw and Alistair Livsey with 44 points, six points ahead of second and third. The singles low handicap competition was won by Adrian Studd, whom also picked up the lowest gross prize for a very creditable 76 (38 points). Chris Amor won the high handicap singles competition with 35 points. Mark McCormack won the longest drive competition with a monster drive, Colin South won the closest to the pin competition and Dave Allen the nearest the pin in two.

The complete winners list is available below.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day and was very pleased that it went off with very few hitches. It was great to see so many people enjoying themselves and having a challenging day's golf. I was amazed that we were so lucky with the weather given the amount of rain that fell the following day. Thanks again to everyone for taking part, thanks to the society committee members for their effort on the day and Dave Clark for his help with the scorecards. Thanks to Rob Haste in Golf Galore for good discount on prizes, and finally thanks to Micromuse for their sponsorship and additional prizes.

I am now looking forward to a good golf summer with many society events to come, and I hope to see you all participating in different society events throughout the summer. The autumn meeting will be at Rookery Park - I look forward to seeing you there in September.

Jon Hopkins
BTRGS Captain