The day
A fine golfing weather day and the usual influx of post-summer new arrivals helped swell the number of Tee Setters coming to Modern for July’s Monthly Medal to a healthy 45 players, an equal best Sunday turn-out since February.
5 Newcomers registered this week so a warm Tee Set Welcome is extended to Andrew & Octa Abram, Joe Feld, Paolo Giraudi and Paul Denman. Octa had played previously with Tee Set but since it was apparently well before our records began, we kept her with the Newcomers. Joe, Paolo and Paul took no time to get themselves in amongst the prize winners as you will see further down.
Welcome Backs were all post-holiday returnees with Joseph D’-Cruz especially happy to tell his playing partners all about his wonderful trip to St. Andrews during a blissful summer sojourn.
After last week’s debacle at Gading Raya, there was some concern that two competing afternoon competitions and slow morning rounds would again cause chaos with the finely tuned Tee Set arrangements. Modern’s starters were however once again to do us proud by recommending a 30 minute delay so they could clear 6 holes for a semi-shot gun start. This allowed us all to tee off in good order and a relatively smooth round thereafter saw all of us finished well before dark.
The later tee off time did however enable Ken Runyon to appear to be perfectly on time as he cut his arrival very fine even for the later start and indeed give Kathy Scalabre some additional time to try and find her favourite caddie despite the vaguest of descriptions.
A tip for Kathy, get your caddies HP number or take a picture of him/her at least!
The play
Modern again proved a good test of golf for the Monthly Medal with just 5 players breaking net par and she was once again to cough up a healthy return of 6 Skirts with perennial skirt winner, Immediate Past President Pascal “Pastis” Bekaert, being joined by Mel Cantarella, Stefan Thiele, newcomer Joe Feld and 2 unexpected guests: big hitting long drive favourite, Tony Howarth and the consistently inconsistent Fernando Gaggino.
Staying up for their photo, Joe and Stefan were also pictured for their equal most strokes on a hole of 10, although were to avoid further fines through the kindness of the “1 fine only” rule.
With Modern’s greens once again playing true, we all had a good putting day which resulted in the Monster Putter staying in the bag for a second week in a row. Divya led the way with 23 putts but, because of the 1 prize rule, Paul Denman was awarded Low Putts for his 27 blows with the flat one.
Skirt winners Tony Howarth and Fernando Gaggino redeemed themselves and offset their fines by winning First Birdie and First Sandy respectively – Fernando taking the prize as Paul was otherwise occupied with Low Putts as above.
Kathy Scalabre showed that owning only 2 clubs and having to rent the balance of her set pending her shipment arrival was no hindrance sharing Most Improved with her cart partner, Mike Webb, in shaving 7 strokes coming home after their front nine efforts.
Mel and Pekka
Continuing the theme of shared prizes Pekka Kivioja and Mel Cantarella shared First Par >= 30 Handicap for their efforts on hole 3.
Low Gross for day was awarded to Ryan Shepherd for his 84 off the stick, much to the surprise of playing partner, the VP of Almost Everything, who could only remember a series of duck hooks off the tee thus leading to a lively debate on the actual number of times Ryan was OB or somewhere near the left side of the course during the round yet still managing to outplay the rest of those present!
Divya continued to show the strong form displayed since having a new club fitting in picking up Low Net A Grade with a net 71, when he was joined in the prize giving photo by Low Net Grade B winner Karel Horak (net 71.) Low Net Grade C was incorrectly awarded due to our putting in an incorrect handicap – this will be corrected in the fullness.
The Monthly Medal special awards saw last month’s medalist, David Baglivo, take the Long Drive prize for his 233m effort and Richard Green awarded Nearest to the Pin for his second best of the day effort as Paulo Giraudi had already left.
“Beware the injured golfer” as the saying goes so there was little doubt that Jaroslav Gaisler would take home the Monthly Medal and the Grand Slam Golf Rp1 juta voucher having spent the morning trying to play down his chances due to a supposedly “bad back”.
Congratulations for a great effort Jaroslav on your winning total of 40 points, you join a long and distinguished list of winners immortalised on the Tee Set Monthly Medal Winners’ shield.
More detailed, player by player results of the day here and lots more photos on the Tee Set Gallery.
Tee Set Eclectic VI – round 3
Sunday was also the 3rd round of the current Eclectic cycle and an initial review of the leaders scores indicates that things have tightened at the top. First and second round leader, Laurie O’Connor failed to improve his Eclectic score of 58 on the day, enabling Divya and Mike Harling to catch him, and with several other players not far behind.
The final round of the current cycle will be at the August Monthly Medal when there will be everything to play for. Check out the Eclectic page in a couple of days to see the updated leaderboard and for those in contention to determine where the best opportunities are to improve your score.
2017 Tee Set Matchplay
Mike Webb edged out Tom Grace 3 & 2 to reach the bracket semi-finals leaving just one game outstanding for Matchplay Supremo James Ross to adjudicate on as this round came to a close at Modern.
Bracket Semi-Finals up next for the remaining 8 players and with these matches due to complete by 3rd September.
Next up
Unless you are freshly returned from the moon then you will know it is “Happy 34th Birthday to Us” next Sunday, when we will be holding our annual fun Texas Scramble at Matoa. As if that were not enough fun we also have Hot-Hed’s Hot Dogs, gallons of Jack Calcotes (in)famous Smoothies, another magnificent birthday cake from Richard Mau’s Hotel Luansa – and of course some most generous prizes for the top 3 teams to finish on the day!
Our birthday is all about having fun and maybe remembering a little of our long history – and, most importantly everyone is welcome to join us!!
As always on our birthday we will adopt the Yayasan HOG for the day and will be making a munificent donation to their cause, a cause that has brought a life worth living to an astonishing near THREE THOUSAND Indonesian kids afflicted with cleft palate and cleft lip at birth.
The HOGS will no doubt also be passing the hat round for individual donations to this most worthy of causes on the day, so do please bring a little change!
If you haven’t already, then sign up here – if your intent is to register a team or part team then indicate the other players names in the “comments field” – and a fair handicap estimate if they don’t have a Tee Set handicap.
See you Sunday for the mother of all birthday parties!! … Tee Set
Tee Set 