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.

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 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).

There was a slightly unusual separation of 3 players at the top who were well clear of the rest of the field by 5+ shots. Not sure how to explain that, although the tricky pin positions might be something to do with it. Many pins needed Scheffler’esque discipline to aim nowhere near them.

Kevin Prendergast was the well deserved winner, and now holder elect of the iconic Claret Jug, not only with an impresssive net 62, but also the lowest gross. Very well done. (It could have been very different though…with a thinned wedge on 18, but the ball happily managed to stop short of the pond.)
In second place was James Deissler, who looking at the other scores would be forgiven for being fairly confident of victory. James in the end fell just one short.
The final spot for the top 3 went to Julian James, with an equally excellent net 64.

This was the 5th (of 6) rounds for the Founders Cup.
Course conditions were fair and the weather improving as the morning progressed.
The wind provided something of a challenge on some holes, gusting as it

With 1 round left, Gina is leading on 148 with a healthy 7 pint margin over Alex and Ellie on 141.

A good turnout for our Captains’ Day and so nice of them to organise for a good day weatherwise. After the recent days of rain, the course was definitely looking greener but of course that reduced the amount of run, though looking at the top end of the results the higher handicapped players were taking full advantage.

Although this is a mixed event, there are separate prizes for the men’s and women’s winners. For some time the top 2 spots were held by the women until Ryan split them. With a splendid 41 points, Ellie is continuing her current good run of form to win the overall competition and take the women’s first place. For the men, Ryan with his 40 points takes the men’s first spot. With NIamh and Allan both on 39 points they take the runners-up spot in each of the events.

In addition to the main event, your captains organised some addtional challenges – the quiz and no, of pars recorded will follow later.
The nearest the pins (or as Paul G had started to call them, novelty prizes) are as follows:
2nd Hole (nearest in 2): Richard Smith
7th Hole: Men – Nigel
Women – Ellie
10th Hole: Men- Pete Needham
Women: Els
12th Hole (nearest in 3): Will B
16th Hole: Men – Allan
Women – Jenny
18th Hole (nearest in 2): Maher

The organisation etc of the day was obviously taking precedence for Paul, as he forgot to sign his card – though perhaps he just thought it would ensure he didn’t win his own captain’s day.

Many thanks from the women to Alison for providing some half-way refreshments and for our haribos and marker pens.

& to the club for the tab behind the bar.

Paul’s challenge to guess how many pars or better were recorded for the day was won rather appropriately by Ali, the women’s captain. She was closest with her guess of 213. The actual number was 172.

Quiz results won by Roger & Aidan who got 15 out of the 18 correct, are as follows:

Laura Davies
Aaron Rai (USPGA winner)
Jim Barnes (previous Englishman to win the USPGA)
Nelly Korda
Petr Korda
Jessica Korda
Gene Sarazen (first man to complete golf’s Grand Slam)
Lydia Ko
Ben Hogan (second GS)
Inbee Park
Gary Player (third GS)
Annika Sorenstam
Jack Nicklaus (fourth GS)
Lexie Thompson
Tiger Woods (fifth GS)
Lottie Woad
Rory McIlroy (sixth GS)
J H Taylor

Well impressed that they knew so many of them.

A fine pleasant day with threat of rain rain which fortunately held off. Not a day to be putting from above the hole on some greens and many a card went awry with the unexpected high score! Howver, Angus Robertson and Leigh Drake showed how it should be done winning Div 1 and Div 2 respectively,
Angus won by 4 shots ahead with his net 67ahead of 3 players on net 71. Paul green with his net 71 ahead of Jonathan Evans on countback and Richard Owen was 4th with his net 71.
Leigh Drake was just 1 ahead with his net 64 followed by Bella Mahale’s net 65. Who pushed Peter Miller’s net 65 into 3rd place.. Graham Cull was 4th with his net 67.
There were 9 2’s recorded.

Women

Our third monthly medal of 2026 but with only 50% of the players (12 in May & 11 in April).
Not the nicest of days with the wind that was pretty strong at times but at least it didn’t rain. However, the combination of wind and the rain of the last week contributed to the less than optimal scores today. The ball was definitely not running as it was a fortnight ago, when we were last on Prince’s.

Not quite the same stellar performance from Lia that she showed midweek but with her better back 9 it was sufficient to pip Bella for the win – both net 73s

Men

A dry but cloudy day with moderate south westerly wind. The rain that we have had over the first week of June has ‘greened up’ the course and the bounce and run of May has largely subsided. Only one player in Division 1 beat Par (Henry L-B) and just 3 players in Division 2 – out of a total of 56 players.

Congratulations to:

Division 1
1st Henry Lindesay-Bethune (67)
2nd Nick Rogers (68)
3rd Sam Goodchild-Way (68)
4th Nigel Ward (68)

Division 2
1st Dennis Keough (63)
2nd Gregory Jean-Baptiste (65)
3rd Seymour Laird (66)

After 4 rounds of the Grand Medal (report below) , Gavin Laniger leads from Kerry Sargeant (although only 4 members have played 4 rounds) and in Division 2, David Grace has a commanding lead – although it’s early days!