Captain's Report - Match 9
Dudley Golf Club - 5th August 2018
Where do I start!? Well let's start at the very beginning...the breakfast was nice! The hospitality, as always, was very good...the course...??????
Dudley is one of our favourite courses - it certainly gets your lungs working as you travail the hills of the Black Country, but today - and I know the weather was a factor - today, the course was, I'm sorry to say, in a dire state.
The tee boxes were ok [some with outstanding views], the fairways were scorched - as was the rest of the country's, and as best maintained as they could be - but the greens were an absolutely bloody disgrace. For example I drove a 250 yard drive to the edge of the par 4 12th green, a Birdie surely - I'd have been disappointed with a par - I walked off with a 5! It was like putting on concrete - what made it all the more frustrating is that there was green on the green and that this wasn't the only green to suffer!
So the round was a very frustrating one and not all of my own doing too!
We took the opportunity to play Texas Scramble [3 man team] for this game and there were some good scores coming in and it was Kevin Daly, Brendan Donnelly and Craig Welsh that walked of with a net score of 60.6 and the coveted Captain's Prize Ball Markers.
The nearest the pins were won by myself on the narrow 4th [it shot over the green, up the hill and trickled back down onto the green] and the ever impressive Mark Jones who is looking to secure this years player of the year prize!
When we got back into the clubhouse the members were very keen to hear about what we thought of the course - it appears we weren't the only ones disappointed at the, hopefully temporary, demise of the usually impressive course. However, it has to be said that we did find out that they had had no full time greenkeeper for some time and the new one had only just started this week. A relief to hear - the new greenkeeper has a lot of work on his hands - good luck with that!
Happy golfing chaps!
D. Logue - Captain.