Report – CITCO round 4 – 3 June 2015

Dennis Robertson took up the gauntlet thrown down by Arnaud Bouteiller & the previous starters. With a fortnight to mull over the menu, the safer option of Neeps and Tatties were left off in favor of the crowd-splitting Haggis Roll. The digestif was a no-brainer, and a fine 18yr old was the star of the whiskeys on offer. Taking it a step further, the Saltire bedecked the banquet table & a selection of tam o’ shanters was made available for a pre-match selfies. Keep an eye on the website for the pic’s! Great show Mr Robertson, lang may yer lum reek. Based on the continuing performance of our starters, we are going to have to change the name of our society from Friendly Round of Golf Society, to something more culinary related. Fabulously Rotund with a touch of Gout Society maybe? The FROGmittee remains open to your suggestions.

Down to the principal matter in hand -> Golf & round 4 of the CITCO Grand Prix.

The fine weather resulted in some equally fine scoring throughout the field & Standard Scratch for the night remained at an impressive 16 points.

Steve Kaiser would have being feeling confident he had won the Nearest To the Pin award as his name stayed at the top of the list all the way until the last flight, but Alan Botfield pinching the spoils from him at the last moment with a fine pitch.
Arnaud Bouteiller hit a 299yrd belter down the 8th, but Ian Doherty just about managed to avoid the long stuff with his effort and denied him of a couple of boxes of FROG-logoed balls for the Long Drive award.

Even with such a loft Standard Scratch, Mark Phillips will receive his first ever handicap cut! His impressive performance in bringing home 17 points is enough to lose a few 0.1’s, but unfortunately is only good enough for 5th place.
The battle for third & fourth descended into an ugly affair, with an objection being lodged by Mark Gillies against Steve Kaiser for slow play. The R&A were consulted only to rule that Steve’s pace was actually slower than the formal definition of slow play so third had to be awarded to Steve on technicality. The R&A did advise that they would plug the loophole in the rules with add an additional category of sub-slow play, linked to the rate of glacial creep. Look out for ‘Kaiser-Kreep’ in your 2016 rule book!
Andrew Paton & Stuart Rowlands were much more gentlemanly in their settling of the top two places. Both hit sufficiently few shots to earn 18 points, with Stuart having the better finishing holes & taking the top step. Congrats on the win Stuart & a fine start to your Grand Prix.

The Pink Ball was only going one way last night… 1st hole = lost ball; 2nd hole = lost ball; 3rd hole = lost ball; 4th hole = lost ball; 5th hole = lost ball. Things got so bad that his clubs & caddie car tried to escape down the hill on the 11th whilst he was occupied on the green. The FROG spotted the escape attempt and gave chase down the hill. Seeing that he was gaining on them, his clubs threw themselves at a tree on the second fairway in a last ditch effort to end it all. Unfortunately for them they survived the collision & their abuse continued all the way up the 12th. Paul Goes sat smugly knowing his 8 points was too many to win & happily presented the prize to Jess Have for his 6 points.

Thanks to Jonny Hill for doing the scoring on the night. Good to have someone competent on the job.

After four rounds the top of the overall CITCO Grand Prix leaderboard looks something like this:
Andrew Paton retains the lead with 63 points & a 13 point lead!
Mark Houston adds 10 to his score to move to second with 50 points
Ian Doherty jumps to third with 49 points.
The chasing pack are Gerry Mullen 48; Steve Brúnt 46; Merve Herneman 45; Arnaud Bouteiller 42; Steve Kaiser 42; Alan Botfield 41; Duncan Tippin 41.

Thanks to our main sponsor CITCO for their support.

Neil Underwood will be in touch with everyone to ask for your preferences for the next CITCO event at Preisch on June 17th.

SHRM Matchplay

Only one SHRM Matchplay result was decided on the night.

Jonny Hill toyed with Mark Houston all the way to the last, before making it through to the next round 1up.
At an unknown location & with an unknown score (i.e. I can’t remember) Stéphane Ayache did away with Russell Edwards and progresses to Round 2.

A final dispensation has been given to those remaining Round 1 matches. A winners name has to be agreed and submit to the FROGmittee by June 10th. If you happen to play a round of golf to help determine who that winner is, then all the better.
No winners name by 10th will result in neither player going through. Round 2 matches have until June 24th to be settled.

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

Some stellar photographs from the evening will appear here shortly.