A cloudy start but still a warm day in the high 20’s deg C as the sun broke through. Rock hard fairways and negligible rough provided good scoring opportunities and almost half the field played to their handicap, or better.

The winner of the President’s Putter trophy was Attilio Cheso with an outstanding 48 points, playing off a ‘capped’ handicap of 32 (his full course handicap was 34, which would have been 50 points !). Starting with a 5-pointer for a birdie on Hole 1 was something that most of us could only dream of ! By far this was Attilio’s best score on his EG record, and followed a score of 43 points at Coulsdon Manor on Friday. WHS reacted to these excellent scores by imposing an ESR of 2 strokes and Attilio’s HI is now 5 strokes lower than it was a week ago !!

Four players scored 41 points, with Sheena claiming 2nd place on countback from Charlie, Doreen and Kevin. Close behind on 40 points were James Deissler and John Ahad. James’s round reduced his HI down to 16.2, his equal lowest on record and into Division 1.

The Nearest the Pin winners were as follows:

1st in 2 : Steve De Long and Avi Murphy
2nd hole: Iker Lanzagorta
4th hole: Alex Catlow
13th in 2 : Ed Hall
16th hole: Kevin Prendergast
18th in 2 : Attilio and Sheena

After Round 5 of the Top Dog competition, and taking into account points accrued for the singles knockouts (to date), the latest situation is shown on the attached Senior and Junior Top Dog points tables.

In the Seniors, it’s very tight at the top. Iker (26) has ‘sneaked ahead’ of Brian McMahon (25), with Allan Boyd on 24 points.

In the Juniors, Sean O’Sullivan (21) has overtaken Robin Thomas (18), with Mike Shabani 3rd on 16 points.

With 2 more competition rounds to go, and the knockouts to be completed, there’s still opportunities for a lot of members to climb to the top of the tables.

The usual weather applied, hot, and then more hot. Lots of run on the fairways, but greens holding quite well.

The winner today, of the Fred Hawtree Cup,, perhaps a little fortuitously, was Susan Smith, with a very excellent 4 up on the course. Well done.
Avi Murphy should have won by 2, but the scorecard, after being checked at least 5 times, to be sure, is not signed by the player. Apologies Avi – maybe can be debated later with someone else in the household.
John Ahad had an equally fine score, matching Susan, but in 2nd place on countback.

Looks like everyone is getting the hang of the extra run and the ability to hit off the hard packed and frequent very tight lies. Lots of scores below par today so there could be a 1 shot PCC overnight even taking into account the shot adjustment the women get for a mixed medal.

No one could catch Cheryl today with her net 62, although Val had a good try, just 1 back on 63. Taking a leaf out of Peter’s book, Cheryl last played to a gross 93 on Duke’s just over 3 years ago in July 2023. In 3rd spot was Seshi, who her handicap record shows, prefers Duke’s to Prince’s and this round was just a further improvement to get a net 66.
There were 4 players recording net 67s and the men who placed in the top 10 played off whites.

After 3 rounds of the Anniversary Cup (best 4 of 5 rounds), Niamh is leading by 9 shots on 203.

The annual battle of the sexes – renamed by one of the newer members as Love Island when the women & men pair up…except the idea is to beat each other!!

An amazing and unexpected result as it ended 5 wins apiece – according to the engravings, this was the first such result since 1984 which is quite incredible.

The winning men were: Nick, Captain Paul, Maher, JamesD and DavidG.
Which means the winning women were: Sheena, Ellie, Niamh, Doreen & Els.

Looks like the closest match was played by captain Paul who got his win on the 18th.

A re-match in November was suggested when I don’t think there’d be many women signing up. The hard parched fairways probably give the women more help than they do the men who don’t want to ball to keep running when it’s getting close to those ditches that don’t tend to affect us.

The weather was somewhat cooler than in recent days, with something of a gusty breeze at times. The fairways remain very fast, and ditto most of the greens. The flags were in a reasonably central position on most greens.

In Division 1 Richard Owen led the way with a 4-under par net 64, whilst in Division 2 Cheryl Woodhouse won the monthly medal glass on countback from Alex Braun (both on net 65).

After 6 rounds of the Grand Medal Accumulator, Angus Robertson (334 strokes) leads by 8 from Richard Owen, whilst in Division 2 David Grace has a 9 strokes lead over Graham Cull.

Women

For most of us it seemed more of an endurance test than a relaxing round with all 3 games on the same hole probably more often than not and another round not much short of 5 hours. After the challenging pin positions of 2 weeks ago, today’s were a lot more ‘get at able’, not that it looks from the scores as if many of us took much advantage of this.
The ball may be running a lot, but in many cases not necessarily in the desired direction and the hard baked ground makes many shots more of a challenge.

Doreen was her usual straight down the middle self and but for Jenny’s excellent net 66 would have won another medal.
Congratulations on your win by 5 shots Jenny and on a good cut to your handicap tomorrow..

Men

Congratulations to:

Division 1

1st Brian McMahon (63)
2nd Kerry Sargeant (68)
3rd Paul Kamerling (68)
4th Tom Simpkins (68)

Division 2

1st Richard Hanna (62)
2nd Toby Hunt (64)
3rd Mike Shabani (68)
4th Seymour Laird (68)

In the Grand Medal accumulator, Brian McMahon leads the way in Division 1 on 343 points, from Peter Harrison (347) and Toby Hunt (354). In Division 2, Greg J-B (351 points) and David Grace (353 points) lead the rest of the field by a long way.

The protected pin positions probably required either a super high shot, to get it to stop, or somehow lots of back spin. That may have been difficult for many players today. Any slightly off target shots could also be severely punished due to the slippery baked hard fairways. A PCC of perhaps 1 tomorrow may be a possibility.

Brett Colley nonetheless managed to figure it all out, and was the one and only player in the whole field to play to his handicap. Really well done.
On countback with a very good 34 points, Bella Mahale secured second place, along with Cheryl Woodhouse in third. Tom Simpkins also had a very good 34 points but, and perhaps too much information, carded a 9 on 18, Costly, but then the 18th from the white tees always a tough shot.
Only a few men played white tees today..

NTPs as dollows:

In 2 2nd – Hunt
NTP – 7th – Tom Simpkins
NTP – 10th – Suhail Salim
In 2 15th – Richard Marriot
NTP 16th – Toby Hunt
In 2 18th – Brett Colley

A bottle of sparkling wine or 3 Pro V1’s to the winners

Women

Much better scoring today on the course that is generally considered the tougher of the 2 – but the greens on Duke’s are much less contoured in general, even if the pin positions were tucked behind bunkers or at the far most point (as expected of course).
Going in to today Lia had a 2 shot lead which she extended today to win the Club Champs by 4 with a gross 189 from Joan on 193.

There is no divisional split in the gross event and Jenny is 3rd in this with 195.
This converted to net 142 in the Pembroke Cup which Jenny wins by 8 from Seshi on 150.
Lia also wins the net in the Handicap Cup division by 5.

With only 13 women involved in this, prizes will only be awarded to the winners of each net trophy.

Lia & Jenny brought their A games to this event for both weeks and will get handicap cuts tomorrow – it looks like both will be cut to their current ‘low’ handicap index.

Congratulations to Lia & Jenny

Men

Overcast early morning but the sun broke though by mid morning to provide a very warm and windy day. Although the fairways were ‘rock hard’, the rest of the course was ‘well presented’ by the greens staff to provide an appropriate challenge for our club championship, with all pins sited close to the edges of the greens, and often on tricky slopes.

In Division 1 Richard Smith is crowned Club Champion with a total gross of 158, 4 clear of past champion Aiden Hurley, who had lead by 3 after round 1. Paul Kamerling retained his place in 3rd on 165 strokes. “Well played Richard”.

In Division 2 there was also a significant change with Tony Kopczak clawing back a 9-strokes deficit to equal Ed Hall, both with a combined gross of 185. In the event of a tie, an 18 holes ‘play off’ is required to determine the Junior Champion. Just 1 stroke behind, in 3rd place, was James Deissler (186), with a best net score of the day (67).

The Handicap Trophy is won by Richard Smith (140 strokes), from Tony Kopczak (144) and Paul Kamerling (146).