Captain's Surprise
26th July
The Captain's Surprise competition goes back to 1953 when it was known as "Sur-Prize" and traditionally involves pitting the ingenuity of the captain against the patience of the members. The current trophy was presented by Roy WIlliams when he was captain in 1988.
Hopefully, this year's competition was less like crazy golf and more of a interesting challenge. Marking Badrock's corner as out-of-bounds seemed to catch quite a few out, although Richard himself got away with it the first time round after playing 5 off the tee, (provisionally), he found his first ball in play. More disappointing was the newly "constructed" water hazard above the 6th green which did not seem to cause any problems - so I filled it in but let me know if you know any different. Commiserations to Ed Ramsden who had not realised that his joker hole was supposed to be his best not his worst - perhaps Peter was right when he said that I was being cruel by ignoring the usual practice of limiting the damage to 10 on any one hole. Amazingly, Ed was not even last!
At least two competitors arrived in the morning a little tired and emotional and one of them was in such a state that he even paid for his and his dad's bacon sandwiches and raffle tickets. He did forget to pay his drinks bill though which may result in the bailiffs being sent in. Apparently one of the bailiffs was practising sitting on people in Boots on Saturday - you have been warned!
Congratulations to Will Tolley who played some excellent golf after a fairly poor start was rescued by his joker. Jonathan Haley was the runner-up, making full use of his joker to turn a 10 on the 4th into a 4.