We had a pleasant day at Balmac today with a moderate temperature and calm conditions. The course has seen an improvement to the greens and fairways with more spring-like conditions over the past week.
 
We had 26 players in the draw for Wednesday and the scoring was impressive. At the top of the heap was Duncan Harvie who shot an 85 to get the top stableford score of 39 points. There were a number of close followers and mention needs to be made of Murray Edgar who shot 71 to bring in 38 points for a second placing.
 
The team scoring was barely average with the first 6 hole tranch shared between 4 teams with a total of 30 stableford points. I have not mentioned any names, as pretty much every one got a few dollars at this stage.
 
The second 6 holes was won with 43 points by team Nick Nicolson, Vaughn Keenan, Murray Edgar and Mike Henderson, who will get mentioned later in this report.
 
The third 6 hole tranch saw a dominant result with the winners Walter, Nikou, Attenborough and Cameron finishing with a clear 3 point margin over the next challenger with 50 points.    
 
The swingers trophy was won by Murray Edgar with an impressive 5 birdies, great stuff Murray.  It must be mentioned that he was a bit careless to have a double bogey and 3 bogies to compromise a potential sub-par round.   
 
Getting back to one of the feature groups in the draw today, which included LIV Henderson, Edgar, Mickleson and Keenan, one needed to be a fly on the wall to work out how the teams were drawn, as Henderson and Edgar must have fancied themselves when they were drawn together. This was not the case with Keenan and Mickleson combining well to win on the final green, after Nick had putted out for a 5 with 3 points to win the beer. I am told however that Nick had to fork out some whiskeys for a couple of you know whats during the round.
 
There was also a question raised after the round about how you could have a lost ball on a hole and not have incurred any penalty shots.  This could only apply to Mr Nicolson who had won the 10th hole with a 3 pointer and proceeded down the pathway in his cart to the Glen ready to push the dagger into his opponents. As he got out of the cart he pulled his ball out of his pocket and while drawing his driver from the bag, his  golf ball slipped from his grasp and bounced down the concrete path. Despite pursuing it down the pathway it accelerated faster and lodged into the rough to the side of the path where he was unable to recover within the 2 minute time frame. So was this a 2 shot penalty before he had started the hole? Apparently the next shot ended under the bridge in the left hazard and after a couple of good shots he made a 6 for one stableford point on the hole.
 
The raffle was won by John Marsh with number 27.   
 
We also sang a happy birthday to Trevor Bolt for his 66th birthday, congratulations Bolty.
 
A welcome to John Cutler down from Wanakaland, as well as Derek Todd from his knee operation, great to see them both.