Captains Drive In 2024

Organising an outdoor event at the moment is a challenge; the weather forecast can switch from dry, to rain, to windy, to named storm in 24 hours, so all credit to Club Captain Shaun Judd who held his nerve and pushed for this year’s drive in to go ahead this weekend. I’m not going to lie – it was windy. I caught up with the Club President after 9 holes and commented that it was lucky that we weren’t in a sailing regatta and his reply was ‘no but a regatta would be over by now!’

A cup of coffee, a welcome sausage roll and cone of sweets half way refuelled the body which helped moral and the Captain’s had agreed to ease the usual Drive in format so that only two scores had to count on the first nine holes, then three from 10-15 and four from 16-18. There was also a Nearest the Pin competition on the par 3s and most had a stick to push into the 1st fairway to guess where the Captain’s drives would fall.

Once everyone had successfully entered their scores into the app, the Drive in went ahead on the first tee. Louis led the way with an awesome drive, and he was closely followed by Suzanne Hunt and David Brownsell. Club Captain Shaun Judd was presented with a glass of port in an Arsenal glass before he sent his drive straight down the first fairway. Returning to the clubhouse, prizes were presented and a game reminiscent of heads and tails was played with questions about the club captain and you either raised a blue or red stick to indicate your opinion. Kris Whinney knows her friend very well and was the winner – congratulations! For those who didn’t win a golf prize there was the option of the raffle which had some awesome prizes donated by local businesses and friends. Thank you to the team who made the day run so smoothly, we have a wonderful group of volunteers on the section committees who work closely with the Wrag Barn team to make the most of every day whatever storm Kathleen et all want to throw at us.

The results:

1st       Marcus Richards (9), Mark Werrell (6), John Turner (14) & Sam Mepham (5)        107
2nd      Bob Drayton (28), Gary Rabey (13), Chris Waterman (20) & Peter Toop (25)          105
3rd       Ashok Ladva (28), Gaurang Patel (17), Dinesh Gohil (22) & Richard O'Grady(25)     103

NTP
3rd John Thomas, 5th Andy Eastham, 12th Louis MacDiarmid, 16th Marcus Richards

Nearest the Captain’s Drives
Club Captain; John Thomas, Junior Captain; Bob Powers, Senior’s Captain; Andy Bright, Ladies Captain; Verity Manners

Thank you to the greenstaff for presenting the course so well under difficult conditions and to the F&B staff for looking after so many people with efficiency and a smile.

Verity Manners

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