The day

A wonderful stress free 25 minute journey from South Jakarta to the delightful Imperial Golf Klub with a K served to get the day off to a great start. It must be said, however, that while the completion of the JORR’s missing Western link has transformed journey times to that side of the city, its surfacing is of a quality sufficiently awful to leave more coffee on your correspondent’s Tee Set shirt front than down his neck by the end of the section.

Our very own registration table, reserved restaurant area and attentive service from waitresses possessed of an ability to maintain individual bills efficiently certainly distinguishes Imperial from the common herd.

We have Imperial down for 3 rounds in 2015, maybe that should be increased; it was difficult if not impossible to find a Tee Setter not enamored of the course and the facilities and service that go with it. Really top course.

Just one Newcomer to report in Todd Roesler from Australia, enjoy your golf with us Todd.

More than half our 31 players today were Welcome Backs this week though the longest absentee was Tarun Agarwal at “only” 18 weeks, Welcome Back to all!

With planes recently full of departing Tee Setters,  31 players was a very decent turnout for the pre-Xmas game and compares well with last year’s 21 at Riverside when, in stark contrast to today’s glorious weather conditions, it rained the entire round 🙂

The play

The first week of our new prize structure, which recognises and rewards low net across the Handicap grades A, B & C, caused rather less than expected confusion.

Overall Low Net Winner was Mark Fiorello with a fine 79-11-68 while our very excellent policy of nobody being able to win more than one prize meant Anlo took A Grade with a net 72 , that wily old fox Geoff Thwaites took B Grade with 71, though was to be otherwise engaged as the prizes were being given out – while Carolyn Taylor won C Grade by a convincing 3 strokes.

The recently installed Vice President of Good Course Discounts, standing up for  the first time at Tee Set, was a little bemused by all these new developments but was happy to discover he had to give himself a red one for Low Gross off the stick, helped in this by the non-appearance of Sam “Kelly” Westen despite his having signed up. Maybe next week, Sam??

That rare bird, the eagle, made a welcome reappearance with the Grumpy Pirate holing out for three on the green at the long par 5 6th to secure 1st Eagle while Messrs. Murchison and Garwood didn’t hang about so long, taking 1st Birdie and 1st Sandy respectively at their very first hole played.

Newcomer Todd Roesler got used to his hire clubs quickly enough to improve by 8 strokes on his back nine to share Most Improved with Paul Taylor while King Tirto’s par on the 5th was soon enough to take 1st Par HC >=30 – and make him a very happy man.

A quite outstanding 10 Skirts today was undoubtedly a function of how far forward the red tees were on a significant number of holes, though that factor was definitely not in play as Jess Kindler hit his drive 10 metres left at right angles to the tee box on the 11th. The ball dropped, rather unkindly one felt, just behind one of those large circular concrete bins with sand in.

Undaunted, our hero decided to play it where it lay, only to send his ball, with the help of the concrete bin thing, 30 metres behind the tee box where he was unable to find his ball and dropped another one to find himself lying three and still well behind the tee box. That was also to give Jess a very promising start to securing Most Strokes on a hole with 12 – but maintained a smile throughout the experience. Tee Set spirit it’s called, well done Jess!!

For the second week in a row, just 40 Putts was enough to secure Monster Putter, this time for Tettie, bad luck Tettie.

Fuller player by player details here while more photos of a very fine day will be found on the Tee Set gallery eventually.

Next up

The Web Guy was clearly suffering from a surfeit of “Xmas spirit” in announcing next Sunday as being at Riverside as, of course, it is the last round of the year and the last round of the month and therefore Monthly Medal time at Matoa.

An 11am tee off from 1 and 10 as usual with green fees of just 600,000 including the compulsory shared cart.

With so many out of the country, this gives the stay behinds a much improved chance of glory and getting their name etched onto our beautiful new Monthly Medal Shield – so come and celebrate with us as we close a great year and raise our glasses to the sunlit uplands of Tee Set’s 2015!

Sign up here as usual to join in the fun.

See ya at Matoa! … Tee Set