Some more welcome rain this week, except for our twilighters. Our green keepers will be especially pleased, as there are still issues with the pipework connecting the irrigation system’s main pump, forcing them to continue having to hand water the greens. They haven’t though been able to water our tee blocks, which is why they have started to harden up, as many of you may have noticed when trying to push your tees into the ground.
This Weekend’s Events
Tomorrow our interclub teams are back in action. Our women’s Mary Alward team is at home to Kapiti, our men’s Div 2 team is at home to Paraparaumu, our Div 5 team is at home to Manor Park, and our Div 9 team is away to Judgeford. Best of luck to all our club representatives. For non interclub players, our women’s Saturday club will be playing Medley 5 – Stableford, and for men members, it is the 6thround of the Autumn Cup, with this round being played on a nett basis.
On Sunday it is an opportunity for our regular Sunday players to compete for a Monthly Medal, which is more often played for on a Saturday. This is played in 2 divisions, with the lower handicappers off the blue tees and the higher handicappers off the white tees, with the winners of each division eligible to compete for the Top Dog trophy at the end of the year. Also on Sunday is the final of the Holland Cup, between Alex Lim and Don McCrone. Can Alex break the curse of the top qualifier, or will Don repeat the form he showed last Sunday? Best of luck to both finalists.
Upcoming Events
Our next major event is the Karori Events Centre fundraiser tournament on Sunday 8 April, an ambrose event to raise funds for the Karori Event Centre that has been built in central Karori but needs further funds to complete the fit out. This will be the third year we have run this tournament, with the last 2 being extremely popular and a lot of fun. If you haven’t already done so, please put your teams together and complete an entry form available from the shop desk, or email directly to Fleur Nicholas ( fleurandrichnz@gmail.com ). The entry fee is $30 per club member (ie $120 per team of 4) and $50 per non members, with all the net proceeds going towards funds for fitting out the new events centre. If you would like to play but don’t have a team, let the club know and we will put some teams together.
Jubilee Tournament
What a great day we had last Saturday when we celebrated St Patrick's Day and the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of the club with our Jubilee Tournament. We had a full field of 80 competing in the individual stableford competition as well as making up 20 teams of 4 to compete in the Irish Foursomes teams event and in the anniversary quiz that was held in the clubhouse after play. The winner of the individual event was Luke Underwood, on countback from Dick Borgdorff, who both finished with 40 points. As part of his prize haul Luke was presented with the “Jubilee Cup” by Phil Quinn on behalf of the Quinn family who recently gifted their father’s 1940 Suburban Amateur Championship Cup to the club. This cup was originally played for by the 3rd incarnation of the Karori Golf Club and fitting therefore that it becomes our Jubilee Cup. It was great to have representatives of the Quinn family playing in the tournament and enjoying the festivities afterwards.
Go to our Facebook page for more photos of this event
KGC Facebook Page
NB. We had trouble emailing out the draw for this event last Friday evening, with a spam filter seeming to intercept and reject it. We did though post it onto the front page of our website and in future, we wont email out draws for events but instead will just upload them onto our website. Note that the front page of our website is visible to everyone, and doesnt require members to log in.
Women’s Tuesday Club
On Tuesday we had a good turnout to play the 4th round of our Medley competition. It was a Par round and the winner was Chris Suggate on +3, 2nd was Jane Campbell on +1 and 3rd on a countback was Marion Thompson being all square. Well done to our winners
Men’s Wednesday Club
The weather on Wednesday 21 March was great with overcast conditions and slightly windy, making the game comfortable for 32 players. More people turned up than expected, probably because they competed for the Bogey Cup. This was the second game for the series of 2, calculated on the par format. The winner for the Cup was Fergus McLean on countback with Plus 5. Mike Suggate unfortunately came second with the same score Plus 5. The Wednesday Committee will present them with one bottle of wine each for winning the Cup next Wednesday (28 March).
For the day's competition, the winner was David Burton with score of Plus 4, with an incredible putt of more than 20 metres in one hole. Second was Geoff Lee with plus 2 as well as others with same score: Graham Presland, Chris Pearce and Keith Gaskin. Balls were distributed to plus 1 to Fergus, Dick Adam, Ian Bates and Mike Suggate.
We had three Two's for Don McCrone, John Markham and Mike Suggate. Don did not have to donate the piggy bank because he made the two after winning the NTP (nearest to the Pin) on hole no. 4. Bunny for the day was Satish Chandra. This is probably because he did not have enough sleep, being the last entrant in the competition, arriving just before we drew the discs.
For regular raffles, Geoff Lee won the first prize, Ian Bates won the second prize and Martin Leung won the third prize. For the Wine raffle, Dave Cullen won a bottle of Chilean wine. All Wednesday Club members please support the wine raffle, this is an effort of the Wednesday Committee to raise more funds for the club with its equipment replacement programme.
The members also took home all the bottles for re-cycling in their own green bins, so, thank you very much for your contribution.
We also want to mention few other titbits: two members will compete with each other on Sunday for the Holland Cup: Don McCrone and Alex Lim. Good luck to both of them. Also, David Ainsworth accumulated his winnings and donated 2 sleeves of balls, Don McCrone and Fergus McLean donated all their balls collected on the day for general distribution.
To speed up the game, we will use hole no. 10 as a start tee so that more players are distributed more evenly. It is also noted that all flights finished the round by 3:30, an average of 4 hours. What a record !!!!
Hope to see more members next Wed before the Easter. We have more prizes thanks to Chris Pearce's initiative. Regards, Victor Diem
Harcourts Twilight Thursday 22 March
No Twilight yesterday due to the downpour of rain. We will now have our final competition round next Thursday night followed by dinner and closing prize giving. This is our last Twilight for this season so we hope to see a good turnout. All members and friends are welcome. We will need to get started earlier next week so tee off times will be between 4.30pm and 5pm. Wayne and Tim
Committee Feedback
The Committee held its monthly meeting this week and can report as follows:
· Both our fairways mower and our surrounds mower need replacing now, and will not last until we have generated funds from the potential sale of the spare land behind the green keepers’ shed. We are currently applying for grants towards the cost of replacing them and will fund the balance of their cost with vendor financing. We wont run a specific capital appeal, given we ran one last year, but any donation, no how big or small, will always be welcomed. With us having charitable status, if you make one before the end of this month, you will be able to use your receipt to claim a tax refund this year.
· Our Financial YTD trading surplus is down on the same period last year, as a result of a drop in memberships and green fee players. However, our cash position continues to be strong and we hope to still generate a surplus for the year, although much will depend on income levels for the winter months when we typically trade at a loss.
· We are reviewing our membership categories and intend to supplement them with a 10 round green fee concession card. The marketing subcommittee is also generating various ideas for promoting the club.
· We intend to update some of our website photos once the course has fully greened up. We encourage all members to email us photos they have taken of the course or their playing group that we can upload to our Facebook page. Watch out also for a photo competition that we intend running later in Autumn.
Firewood
Our stocks of firewood seem to be depleting faster than it is being sold. It is difficult to police pick-ups not knowing whether it has been paid for or not so from now on, we will only sell firewood on a pre-paid delivered basis, at a cost of $120 per cu.m. It will no longer be available for self pick-up. Also, we will only deliver to customers in our catchment area (Johnsonville through to Brooklyn) or within close proximity to Matt’s journey home (Matt lives in Naenae). We will introduce a receipt system such that Matt will not be allowed to deliver without a receipt, which the shop will issue once payment has been received.
Coaching Coaches
Wellington Golf is running another Foundation Coach training session for aspiring golf coaches, this time at Shandon on Tuesday 27th March, from 3-5pm. If you are interested in doing some coaching, participation is free – see attached flyer for registration details.
Entertainment Books
We will once again be selling Entertainment Books, to help raise funds for our capital program. We will be receiving them next month but if you order and prepay for one before April 3, either a hard copy or digital version, you will receive a sheet of Early Bird offers. Purchase from the shop or order online via
Entertainment Book
Happy golfing, play safely,
Your KGC Committee