19 Loose Cannons (Mahmud pranged his car on the way to Staffield) and eventually 20 LEGS ( 2 ladies arrived late, one of them went to KGSAAS!!!!) teed it up just after 8 o’clock on a relatively cool morning at Staffield Country Resort for the annual match.
This year LEGS were the ‘hosts’ and had chosen Staffield as the venue and had requested the match to be played from the Reds & Blues respectively. Several Cannons raised their eyebrows at this decision but since Loose Cannons USGA handicapping is calculated to the average Blue Slope and because the slope at Staffield for Red & Blue is the same at 130, this didn’t seem to me to be an outrageous request. In reality the Blue tees were between 60 and 110 metres behind the Red tees which gave the ladies a big advantage. Plus the fact that LEGS were generally lower handicappers across the board meant that Cannons were up against it from the start. Hey ho.
There were some last minute adjustments of flights to accommodate the 2 late arriving ladies and inexplicably 2 of our flights teamed up with the wrong pair of ladies but play started just after 8 with a mini shotgun start on tees 1 thru 5 West with 2 flights per tee box. This inevitably slowed things up and the round was slow overall taking the best part of 5 hours but everyone enjoyed the competition if not the result. The ladies were good.
Staffield was in great condition but the greens were a tad slow. The weather was fine throughout with a little breeze towards the end of the round. The club had given us West & South for the match so we didn’t have any cross over issues.
Lunch was a Chinese Buffet at the club and LEGS provided every table with 2 jugs of beer. Needless to say many additional jugs were required, mostly by the thirsty Cannons but it was noted that several of the ladies were getting their share as well. One of them went home without her clubs!!! Anyway, many thanks to the ladies for the jugs they provided.
The scoring was chaotic to say the least as many of the ladies (and a couple of the men) had not read or understood the scoring procedure and it was not helped by the 2 Cannons flights that had decided to play with a pair different from the Starter Sheet. And to add to the scorers misery some of the cards were barely legible with numerous corrections and many cards displayed some imaginative mathematics. But from early on the outcome was never in doubt.
The clear winners were LEGS by 7.5 to 2.5. The full result is attached. Note that, where necessary, I have taken the ‘declared’ Stableford points as correct and adjusted the gross score accordingly.
Congratulations to the ladies.
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