Farrington Park junior section gathered for their annual presentation in January. It was clear from the vast number of young golfers present that the future of the junior section at Farrington Park is looking very healthy indeed.
Men’s Captain, Gary Prater, eighteen-hole Junior organiser, John Russell, nine-hole course organiser, Mark Wickham, Club Director, Jon Cowgill, PGA pros, Jonathan Lawrence and Terry Williams, and all other junior organisers were on-hand to present all the prizes to the deserving junior golfers.
Tiger of the Year went jointly to Maisie Dezis and Stanley Dash, Most Spirited Tiger of the Year went to Darcey Matthews, the Most Dedicated Golfer was Reece Tucker and the eighteen-hole Club Champion, Abby Gray, was presented with her trophy. Outgoing Junior Captain, Abby, also handed over the Captaincy to Jackson Carey, with Jake Russell becoming Junior Vice-Captain. In all, over thirty juniors received prizes from the year’s golfing. Congratulations to all!
Seniors
Remarkably, despite the heavy snowfall followed by a torrential downpour, golf was possible – albeit for the bottom five holes, which unfortunately still had snow in places.
Once again, this was down to good work by the greenkeeping staff, who even found time to carry out some fairway slitting! Despite the volume of water just beneath the surface, the course unsurprisingly held up extremely well.
Results from Four-ball betterball competition: Colin Glibbery and Alan Smith, 31 points; Nigel Punchard and Jim Lunt, thirty points; Alan Fussell and Ian Clement, thirty points, George Tyrrell and Steve Banfield, thirty points; Alan Taylor and Steve Mitchell, thirty points; Don Perry and Roger Stone, 28 points. Nearest the Pins on the 8th – Alan Elkington; 14th – Jim Lunt, 15th – Brian Brown and 16th – Dave Metcalfe.
Ladies
‘Gruesomes’ was the format for the Ladies on Thursday, 7th February – a devilish form of Greensomes, where your opposition playing partners choose your pair’s second shot. The object being to choose the worst positioned ball and put your pair under pressure. Not only that, but the weather could have been described as gruesome too; heavy squalls of rain, hail and a biting wind, before the sun ventured from behind the clouds.
Eleven of the fourteen pairs delayed their start until the weather improved, but three teams did get a bit of a soaking. The Duchy course had been reduced to twelve holes to preserve the course after the recent snow and rain; this was enough on such a raw winter’s day. Given the conditions, it was not surprising that the final scores were low, but they were close.
Fourth place went to Maureen Tayler and Denise Baker with sixteen points. Eighteen points secured third place for Maureen Charlton and Pauline Young. Countback had to be employed to determine the first and second places after both teams scored twenty points. Jane Ball and Fiona Hassard, who had been out in the worst of the weather earlier, just beat Min Woodward and Margaret Seery to the top spot.