The Blue Lake Golf Club held its annual presentations night on Friday where all the award winners were presented with their trophy’s or certificates won over the previous year.
Highlights included each of the monthly medal winners and medal of medal winners in both divisions congratulated, while Josie Ashby won the respected Marlene Lingham memorial Stableford trophy and Helen Myers claimed the outright best putter award.
Amongst the Men’s champions, A, B and C grade winners were recognised as well as the monthly medallists. The biggest award for the night went to Geoff Munt who was presented with Life Membership for his untiring work as Club Handicapper.
Munt and his team often have to process in excess of 200 cards per week for each competition. Stephen Smith waited a day to collect his own prize of winner in the monthly Par competition.
Smith laid a good foundation with three successive pars for a +2 start and only found trouble on the signature par three fifth hole. Despite a momentary blip on the 10th he went on to construct a score of +4 on the back nine to take the win.
The threat of slipping back into B Grade was enough impetus for David Dowie (10) to get his game back into form and take A Grade honours. After an almost perfect front nine of +4 the only real trouble he found was on the 13 where he had a double bogey.
But that was only a minor stumble as he still managed to add another plus to his overall tally of +5. Runner-up Stephen Easterbrook (11) chased hard over the last few holes, but alsos tumbled on the 13th, while Michael Watts won a five-way count-back for third place.
B Grade winner Matt Pritchard took some time to get going, but once he did there was no stopping him. The 18 handicapper did not score a plus until the seventh hole, but then proceeded to reel off six plusses in a row and finished with a total of +5.
Tony Brooks started his journey back to the top grade by claiming second place. Brooks (16) had an all or nothing type of round, his run of pars on the closing stages of the front nine boosted his score to +2, but could not add to the total on the back.
It was still enough to see off Matt Roscow, who tied with Brooks on +2. In C Grade the ever-improving Curtis Coppetti joined the winner’s circle with +4. Coppetti (26) did all his scoring on the front nine, walking to the 10th tee with three plusses in his pocket.
Another count-back was needed to separate the minor prizes with Dieter Rostig and Conway Johnson finishing on +3. Rostig stormed home with +5 over the back nine to claim the silver medal. Last week’s winner Karen Panagopolous went back-to-back and claimed the ladies Par competition.
Panagopolous (38) left nearly all her scoring to the last six holes where she earned +3. Basking in the glory of being crowned winner of the Marlene Lingham Memorial Trophy, Jo Ashby continued the celebrations by claiming second place square to her handicap. She was one of four players to finish on that score and Helen Stratford emerged in third place.
The text book smooth swing of Steve Jelly was on show again in Tuesday’s Stroke competition. Jelly parred the first four holes before a tap-in birdie on the fifth. Despite recording six bogeys, Jelly carded 75-8-67 to overcome Bruce Grubb and David Adkins.
