The Day

Padang Golf Modern once more provided a great day for the 41 Tee Setters who showed up for what early on looked like might be a rainy day, but turned out quite nice, and allowed quick play so we were all done with the ceremony just before sunset.

Copious amounts of the President’s Pastis were consumed before, during (as shown above by improvised mixologist Torben), and after the game by many, for once drying up his reserves.

We had 2 Newcomers this week: Paul Hang and Yap Chor Hian, to whom we wish a warm Tee Set welcome.

We also had a few Welcome Backs, but really only one worth mentioning, the return of Tee Set ex-President Peter Reichlmeier, who now lives in Singapore, after 43 weeks, but promised to come and visit us more often.

The Play

Mark Johnson showed that his earlier practice rounds at Modern this week gave him a mastery of the course by winning Low Net A Grade for his net 68. Andrew Waite won Low Net B Grade also with 68, in big part due to his splendid back nine where he finally started hitting his drives straight for a 38 off the stick. While President Pascal Bekaert recorded a rather rare win by winning Low Net C Grade for his net 72.

Neil Mullins was awarded Low Gross for his excellent 80 off the stick.

Thanks to the one prize rule Fernando Gaggino was awarded Low Putts with 26, even though we must mention the very impressive only 21 putts needed by Mark Johnson.

Rasmus Kilde and Manfred Borer both won First Birdie on their 1^st hole.

First Sandy Par was not awarded this week, as the two players who managed this feat already won other prizes.

First Par Over 30 was awarded to Tom Alcedo for his effort on his 12^th hole.

Laurie O’Connor won Most Improved for shaving 15 shots on his back nine from a disastrous 63 on his front nine, probably showing his pre-game massage hadn’t loosen him up enough.

We had a bit of difficulties this week with our Monthly Medal only awards, as due to a change in the course management we didn’t get our normal spotters, which on the bright side saved us some money, so we resorted to the old system of small flags managed by the players, which was pretty good except for the fact nobody picked them up at the end! So after resorting to the honesty system and some long debate, Peter Bush won Longest Drive over Jeff Landau with a drive between 250 and 500 meters, and less arguably Laurie O’Connor won Closest to the Pin for his effort that ended about 2 feet from the pin.

And the biggest prize of them all, the Monthly Medal, was awarded to Peter Bush for his 41 Stableford points accumulated during the round of the day with his net 67. For his performance Peter will get his name engraved on our Monthly Medal Shield and received a medal (he said might not convince his wife his day was well spent) and a 1,000,000 Rp voucher for Grand Slam Golf merchandise (paid in half by GSG and half by Tee Set).

Once more our Monster Putter Monkey stayed in the bag, as nobody deserved a picture with it, as everybody had a good day on the greens given the highest number of  putts was a respectable 37.

Most Strokes would have gone to Jari Antikainen for his 15 shots on par 4 hole #9, but Jari had left in shame and would have anyway not be charged, as he had also collected a skirt, he did pay for.

While on the topic of skirts, what created the most excitement today was perhaps the fun sweepstake where 25 enthusiasts contributed 10,000 Rp each to try and guess on which hole President Pascal would get a skirt, considering he had gotten 10 in a row. All kind of strategies were used, with most opting to pick his early holes, but at the end the President had the last laugh as he finally broke the spell and avoided the dreaded skirt, even though I must admit a couple were quite close. So at the end Pascal ended up splitting the spoils with John Suermondt who was the only one who had shown confidence in the President. But rest assured the 125,000 Rp collected represents only a small portion of his money spent on skirts this year, and will most likely soon be returned.

And finally Modern produced 8 skirts: pictured below Rusty Witwer rocking the wig, Chris Lever, Torben Olsen, Stefan Thiele, Pieter Nielen-Groen and the colorful Mike Riley:

and Jari Antikainen who avoided the photo, and Dirk Kruip who tried to but was instead captured separately:

You can enjoy more pictures of the day here and consult the player by player results here.

Other News

Tee Set Match Play competition

As yesterday was one of the last chances for the participants to complete their warm-up round before the April 2 deadline we had quite a few matches, of which I will only give you unofficial results, as remember the official ones must be emailed by the players to our Match Play El Supremo James Ross.

• Mark Johnson, who was not only on fire with his putter but also chipped in 3 times, beat the hapless Matt Fairey 6 and 5.
• Craig Edwards had an excellent round and defeated Ric Wymer who had a pretty bad day 5 and 4.
• Jeff Landau won 3 and 2 against John Suermondt.
• Laurie O’Connor and Arthur Mallari were all square after 18 holes and decided to continue their match next Sunday at Riverside.
• Rasmus Kilde and Chris Lever both had rather bad rounds, but Rasmus triumphed 3 and 1 at the end.
• Unfortunately, even though he was already at the club and ready to go, Divya Prakash Ahuja had to go home for a family emergency we hope was happily resolved, and cancel his scheduled match with Tony Howarth.
• While earlier in the week Roger Finnie bested Andrew Waite 6 and 4.

As it seems a lot of the warm-up matches won’t be completed by the deadline, our Match Play El Supremo James Ross will determine who wins the remaining matches by default, but don’t worry as this first round only determines in which bracket you will end up for the rest of the competition and everybody will get at least a second match. For more details you can consult our Match Play page.

Tee Set Eclectic

Yesterday’s round was also the third and penultimate round of Cycle 5 of the Tee Set Eclectic, after which the leader board is as follows:

where we can see a lot of movement since the last round, most notably the fact yesterday’s Monthly Medalist Peter Bush took the lead even though he missed the first round, while the diminutive Craig Edwards consolidated his second place, and Mark Johnson – current holder of the D.O.G.S. Eclectic and Tony Howarth are mounting a last minute charge, which promises an exciting final round on April 30, especially considering past winners of our 4 rounds Eclectics needed 51 to put their name on the trophy. You can find more details including all the players results on our Tee Set Eclectic page.

Next Up

Our first visit of the year to Riverside at 735,000 Rp including cart, with a tee off time of 12:30, so please register here.

The Day

Padang Golf Modern reinforced our decision to establish it as our Monthly Medal home for 2017 by treating our 47 Tee Setters to the usual welcome drink, on time start and a challenging course producing only 1 under-par net round on the day, and good service and food including the Fish & Chips I highly recommend.

Maybe the biggest surprise of the day was the weather, given the recent heavy rains and the deluge the night before we all kind of expected at least some rain, but on the contrary as the day progressed so did the sun, resulting in a hot summer day, which even pushed our Web Guy to retire after 9 holes to instead enjoy the spa and sauna facilities.

We had 4 Newcomers (pictured below): my good friend Des Wright making a rare return to his old hometown of Jakarta, the very nice Eric Cherrett (Matthew’s Dad) who said he greatly enjoyed his day and will come back as soon as he can, and our new U.S. Embassy friends Joe Callahan and Mike Duprez, to whom we wish a warm Tee Set welcome.

We also had a few Welcome Backs worth mentioning, lead by Rick Zanker after 38 weeks, followed by Kongkiat Chaisri after 26 weeks and Peter Bosterli after 23 weeks.

The Play

Divya Prakash Ahuja won Low Net A Grade for his net 74, since Ronald Lim who would have won it on a count-back was OB. The Singing ex-President marked his return to competition by winning Low Net B Grade with 72, showing his recent heart operation was not only successful but made him stronger than before, including for his consistent long drives I had the chance to witness all day. Mike Riley continued his good form of late by winning Low Net C Grade for his net 74.

Stuart Wigley was awarded Low Gross for his excellent 81 off the stick, even though he called it a “disappointing round”.

Chris Lever won Low Putts with 27.

Roger Finnie won First Birdie on his 1^st hole.

First Sandy Par was awarded to Joseph d’Cruz for his effort on his 10^th hole.

First Par Over 30 was not awarded this week, as Mike Riley who recorded one on his 2^nd hole had already won another prize and Pekka Kivioja who would have therefore won it was OB.

From time to time we see some quite heroic improvements in a player’s back 9 compared with their front 9 and yesterday we had Peter Bush scoring 61-38-99 for a colossal improvement of 23 strokes to win Most Improved, which I said yesterday was probably a record, which was confirmed by our Web Guy extraordinaire.

A quick check of the statistics below reveals that we indeed have a new record holder as Peter pipped the 22 strokes improvement previously recorded by Koen Verhayen and Fernando El Guapo Gaggino. Well done Bushy!!

The Most Improved prize was created many years ago as a measure of how “socially active” players had been on the Saturday night – and indeed of their powers of recovery! Not always a 100% correlation of course but it does appear Bushy had a great Saturday night – and Sunday morning perhaps?

In the Monthly Medal only awards, Kongkiat Chaisri won Longest Drive with 215 meters and Divya Prakash Ahuja won Closest to the Pin with 1.06 meter.

And the biggest prize of them all, the Monthly Medal, was awarded to our own Caddy Whisperer Geoff Thwaites for his 37 Stableford points accumulated during the only under-par net round today with his 71. For his performance Geoff will get his name engraved on our Monthly Medal Shield and received a medal and a 1,000,000 Rp voucher for Grand Slam Golf merchandise (paid in half by GSG and half by Tee Set).

Once more our Monster Putter Monkey stayed in the bag, as nobody deserved a picture with it, as everybody had a good day on the greens given the highest number of  putts was a respectable 37.

Most Strokes went to James Ross for his 12 shots on a hole.

And finally Modern produced 7 skirts: pictured below Nick Thomas, Mike Riley, Keith Miller trying to hide under the wig the fact he managed to do so while only playing 9 holes, Peter Bosterli and of course President Pastis Pascal Bekaert who continued his roll for now 8 consecutive skirts, and John Suermondt and Pekka Kivioja who avoided the photo:

You can enjoy more pictures of the day here and consult the player by player results here.

Note that the pictures above were taken beside our new Monthly Medal banner that includes our new sponsor of the event Grand Slam Golf who we thank for sharing half of the costs of the banner and the winner’s voucher with Tee Set.

Other News

Tee Set Match Play competition

Yesterday our Match Play El Supremo James Ross performed the draw for the 2017 competition you can consult on our Match Play page. Players who have registered will receive an email explaining in details the competition and rules, but if you had registered and for some reason would now be unable to compete, please let us know ASAP.

Tee Set Eclectic

Yesterday’s round was also the second round of Cycle 5 of the Tee Set Eclectic, after which the leader board is as follows:

not surprisingly lead by our last two Monthly Medal winners Arthur and Geoff, last winner Jaturaporn and the diminutive Craig Edwards mounting a charge. You can find more details including all the players results on our Tee Set Eclectic page.

Next Up

A rare visit to Kedaton at 890,000 Rp including cart, or 750,000 Rp without, with a tee off time of 11:00, so please register here.