Perfect conditions greeted the FROGs who ventured to Canach for round 6 of the CITCO Grand Prix.

The Irish FROGs were delighted to see Colin Cameron at the starters table with his thermos flask in hand. Nothing better to start a round of golf than a nice cup of tea! Their glee was dashed when he pulled warm Luxembourg grillworsts from the flask instead. Any shock was short lived, ‘cause the grillworsts were delicious & more fitting for the Duke’s birthday celebration week. In true Luxembourgish style, they were complimented by some chilled ‘Boff’s. Cheers Colin.

Perfect conditions were not reflected with perfect golf. The standard scratch slid from last week’s lofty 17pts, down to a more familiar 15pts.

Jonny Hill was tasked with carrying out the long drive & NTP markers. Not surprisingly, his name was first down on the list! Pick that hole before or after your drive Jon? Matter it did not, as a volley of drives soared past it. Johan Terblanche hit the best of the lot, long & straight(ish), but was refused any reward for his efforts.
Dennis Robertson arrived to the clubhouse like a giddy teenage girl. He was in the last flight so knew that his shot on the 7th was enough to win the NTP award.
Excluding his shaky start in Junglinster, our best guest award has gone to Nick Felfoldi every time he has played & so it was again tonight with an impressive 16 points. In order to give the other guests a chance, Nick has been promoted to a full member … but this does mean he is eligible for his preferred Long Drive award……hhmmmm we didn’t think this one through! I suppose Steve ?????????? has won too many LD’s already this year, so a bit of competition will do him no harm.

The fall in standard scratch indicated the field did not fare as well as last week, but the same could not be said for the leaders on the night.
Our giddy schoolgirl leapt up to claim his prize for 5th place & 17 points. Dennis Robertson had to be seated once he realised there are no prizes for 5th.
Johan Terblanche ‘kindly’ donated his long-drive prize for the 4th place winner & Ian Doherty was happy to accept. His 18 points was good, but par over the back 4 was not enough. Simon Baker bettered his finish & his 18pts took third place.
Johan Terblanche had a long wait knowing his total was enough to win last week’s event. 20 points was only good enough for second place though, but will have done his position in the overall standings no harm at all.
With no wood in his bag (and soon to be with no shots on his handicap) Neil “I didn’t lose a Ball” Underwood hit a massive 22 points to take the glory on the night. Fantastic performance Neil & congrats on the win.

As regulars in contention for the pink ball, John Sutherland & Gerry Mullen sat calmly knowing their respective 8 & 7 points were not nearly enough to win the coveted title – of so they tried to tried to make it appear. It seems there really is no substitute for experience as they were a long way from the winning score. Only one hand was needed to count up Steve Kaiser’s score, and that even left a finger free for him to scratch his head while wondering how it all went so wrong. His 4 points was enough to claim to the Pink ball, for the second time, for the second time with 4 points.

With 6 events complete, the number of FROGS with a full complement of 5 scores in the overall CITCO Grand Prix is increasing & making the leaderboard more interesting. Andrew Paton started the day with an 18 points buffer at the top & then bettered his worst score by 2 points. Despite this, his lead has been slashed … or at least dented. Dennis Robertson jumps up to second place with 75 points & 7 off the lead. Will Dennis be worried that Andrew is already only 1 points shy of his winning score last year & he has 4 more chances to better his total? Despite adding a fifth score to his overall total Duncan Tippin retains his position in third place on 69pts, but bettering that 8 points you got last night should be easy Duncan!

Thanks to our main sponsor CITCO for their support.

The next CITCO event is at Preisch on July 1st. Mark Houston will be in touch to facilitate the organisation into orderly flights.

SHRM Matchplay
The SHRM Matchplay is shaping up well with the cream coming to the top.

William Heath bowed out, giving Daniel Kaiser a walkover
Jess Have tried to let Andrew Paton take the match, but Andrew stubbornly refused the many chances & left Jess to win 1up
Dennis Robertson bt Craig Ferreira 2&1
Jonny Hill bt Merve Herneman with another 2&1
This leaves Francis Parisis & Simon Baker to finish their match & complete the lineup for the Quarters

The quarters are shaping up like this & are due to be completed by July 7th:
Jess Have to play Stephane Ayache
Jonny Hill to face Daniel Kaiser
Alan Botfield & Arnaud Bouteiller go to battle & Dennis Robertson to play the winner of Francis Parisis & Simon Baker

Thanks to SHRM for their continued support of the Matchplay event.

Ryder Cup

On other matters, I hope you have all been impressing our Ryder Cup captain Alan Botfield of late with your almost & nearly, dreary, stories. The Ryder Cup is around the corner on July 25th, so last chance for any underhanded influencing of the team selection! More to come over the next few weeks.

Wednesday night saw 26 FROGS descend on the France course, at Preisch for round 5 of the CITCO Grand Prix.

Neil Underwood set-up the starters banquet hall off the back of the 1st tee. His Sild och Snaps was approached cautiously by a lot of FROGS – some feared the schnapps – more feared the old fish! Turns out both were delicious. Still not sure how he managed to be able to serve hot meatballs all evening! Are the starters now bringing ovens in order to cater for the event? Great performance Neil, thank you.

It was looking like the standard of golf had dropped significantly when the database suggested standard scratch for the night was 8 points! Even with so many doom & gloom stories in the courtyard of café/restaurant Klein, surely it couldn’t have been that bad … could it?. Upon investigation, it appears the database had expected quite a number of you to be playing off scratch by now so it had done away with your FROGGIE-caps. As it wasn’t Andrew Paton at the keyboard user error was ruled out, so pencil-tips were licked and scoring was done the way out ancestors used to calculate them.

Rob McCorduck was the first to mark his name down on the Long Drive sheet. It was pointed out to him that in order to qualify the drive has to be a) long & b) on the fairway and his was neither of these. Ian Doherty thought he had bagged the prize for a second week running, but Steve ?? stepped up to deny him & claim his second set of long drive froggie-balls this season.
Luc de Vet & Arnaud Bouteiller both hit decent shots into the eighth green, but left too much space between themselves & the pin. Andrew Paton took the NTP award for the best shot on the short hole.

Subject to ratification by the laptop once we manage to wind it back up again, here are the results at the pointy end of the leaderboard:
With 18 points, countback calculations were needed to find that Graham Paul’s better finish put him ahead of Dennis Robertson, but this was only good enough to earn 4th & 5th respectively.
Since no one scored 19, surely you would think 20 points is enough to take the coveted first place, no?
20 points is not good enough if you put two balls into the trees from the teebox on the last hole! This will only get you 3rd place, William Heath.
A steadier finish to earn 20 points & a fine score by Duncan Tippin, but it was only good enough to give him second place.
20 points is good enough if you scored 6 of them in the last two holes, and this is exactly what Stéphane Ayache did to claim first spot. Is this the start of Steph’s run up the leaderboard to reclaim the position he held in 2013? 4 more similar rounds will see you beat your own 93 point record, Steph.

There were two nervous FROGS, who from experience, knew that their 8 point scores were enough to earn them the Pink Ball. Their nerves were eased slightly when they saw one eager FROG had come dressed for the award in splendid pink shorts. Peter Baxter continued to make them feel a whole lot better by refusing to give much away about his scoring, other than letting slip that he lost his matchplay ‘by some margin’. So it seems Tiger had it right all this time with his last day red shirt – what you wear does influence how you play! Peter, you are obliged to tee off at the next CITCO event with your new pink ball, but feel free not to wear the shorts next time – that is unless you want another 5 pointer?.

You will have to wait a while for an update on the overall CITCO Grand Prix leaderboard but all these 20 point scores will be making Andrew Paton nervous, particularly Duncan Tippen’s, as he previously held second place after round 3! Andrew will definitely have lost some of his 13 point lead at the top of the table.

Thanks to our main sponsor CITCO for their support.

Colin Cameron has already been in touch with everyone to ask for your preferences for the next CITCO event at Kikuoka on June 24th. Do get your requests in early as the bank holiday on Tuesday may add some challenges to the communications.

SHRM Matchplay

A plethora of SHRM Matchplay result were decided in the last two weeks.

Results handed in throughout the last fortnight:
Francis Parisis dispatched Gregor Dalrymple 3&2.
Andrew Botfied beat Luc de Vet
John Brophy was seen off by Merve Herneman 1up
Derek Sinclair conceded a walkover to Peter Baxter
William Heath beat Stuart Rowlands

Wednesday night saw
Stephane Ayache only needed 5 holes to conclude his match against Peter Baxter
Dennis Robertson beat Dave Winters in a closer affair
Rob ‘short & wild off the tee’ McCorduck succumbed to Alan Botfield after 1 extra hole
Arnaud Bouteiller defeated Johan Terblanche 2up on the last

Round 2 matches have until June 24th to be settled.

Thanks to SHRM for their continued support of the Matchplay event.