With the final event for the year over, it’s now time to kick back and enjoy some social golf with fellow members and friends over the festive season. Thanks to everyone who made our Closing Day tournament last Saturday such good fun, especially the committee members and their helpers who cooked the breakfast and manned the start desk, the staff who ensured everyone was refreshed after play, and club captains Carl and Fiona who ran the end of year prize giving. But mostly thanks to everyone who played in the event and stayed behind after play to ensure we were able to give our long serving green keeper, Pat Redmond, the send off he deserved. After 35 years, it’s just not going to be the same without his experience around, but we wish him all the very best for his new role with the Terawhiti Trust, and we take comfort that he will still be living and working in the area.

Welcome George
We are pleased to welcome George Morris to our staff for the summer holidays. George is currently studying at Otago University but is back home in Karori for the summer and will be helping us man the clubhouse 7 days per week through to early February.

Green Keeper Update

To date we have not been able to recruit a replacement for Pat. We have conducted interviews and made some offers but unfortunately without success. We will reactivate the process in the New Year but for the meantime we will be operating with only 2 full time staff. We are exploring what other support we can provide Matt and Lukas, and will be organising a working bee early January – see next item:

Tower Cleaning / Course Closure / Working Bees

Transpower’s painting contractor will be repainting the national grid transmission tower that is situated close to our 17th green during the week of 7 January. We agreed this date with them some time ago as likely to be the least disruptive time for our members. As part of the painting preparation the tower is cleaned by high pressure sand blasting, which from a distance can look like smoke. Because this would require us to close off the 17th green and 18th tee block the Committee has instead decided in conjunction with Matt to close off the whole back 9 for that week and have working bees each day to help our green keepers catch up on various tasks around that part of the course. If you are going to be around that week and available to help out, please diarise it now – we will come out with a separate request for volunteers along with a list of tasks we will be aiming to accomplish.

Land Sale

As endorsed at the AGM, the committee has initiated the sale process for the section next to Rocky Point that we propose to subdivide. It is currently featured in this week’s Property Press, available for sale by tender, subject to successful subdivision. If you know of someone who may be interested, please let them know.

New Rules

Don’t forget that new rules will be applying from 1 January onwards. If you are still not aware of the changes, this link will take you to a good summary of them. With changes to the definition of hazards we will be remarking some areas of our course, which should find favour with most members. Many of the changes are designed to speed up play, and in this regard, we encourage all members to play ready golf, but safely – eg don’t race ahead of someone who has yet to play their ball.

2019 New Rules

Miners Arms and Summer Eclectics

Although last Saturday’s Closing Day tournament was the last programmed event for the year, the Miners Arms and Summer Eclectics are now underway. The idea of the eclectics is to record the lowest score you achieve on each hole across all the rounds you play on weekends and public holidays in December, January, and February. The winner will be the entrant with the lowest net score based on the average of their 1 December and 28 February handicaps. A scoresheet for the men, who can play off either the blue or white tees, is on the notice board in the downstairs foyer and the women’s one will be posted in their changing room.

The Miners Arms Bowl is a best ball stableford pairs event played over 3 rounds, with the first to be played in December, the second in January and the third in February. The best stableford score of the two players for each hole is totalled to provide an aggregate score for each round and recorded on the score sheet that is on the notice board in the downstairs foyer. The round to be scored needs to be nominated before commencement of play and must be played in the presence of at least one other club member. The event is open to all members and teams can be male, female or mixed. Note that there are now only 10 days left to complete your December round!

2019 Club Program

This is currently being finalised and we hope to be able to publish it soon. We will attach it to a future Friday Flash plus upload it onto our website.

AGM Minutes

Draft minutes of our 50th AGM held at the clubhouse on Saturday 1 December are attached. If you were at the meeting and don’t believe the minutes are a true reflection of what was discussed and agreed, please let us know.

Membership Cards

We apologise to those members who joined or renewed in November/December for the lateness in arrival of your new membership cards. Although they were ordered over a fortnight ago, they have been sent to Kaiapoi golf club by mistake. Fortunately Kaiapoi are forwarding them onto us.

Men’s Wednesday Club

The forecast was unfortunately true and only 2 or 3 Wed Club regulars braved the prediction and set out for a round--I wonder how far they got! The rest of us chickened out and retreated home to all the other tasks demanded by Xmas festivities.

The next official Wed Club meeting will be on 9th January. Jono tells us that Transpower intend to be water -blasting & painting the KVA tower above the 18th Tee during that week and he proposes therefor that the back nine holes will be closed. We intend to play the front nine twice -- once off the whites and once off the yellows as a bit of fun. In addition Jono and Matt are developing a work programme for that week and will be calling for volunteers to help while we are a bit short of green-keepers. Hope those of you remaining in Wellington will be able to help. Cheers Ian

Team Yip Twilight Golf

The first half of the Twilight season was successfully wrapped up on Thursday night. 18 players and 21 consumers took part in the golf and subsequent feasting. Team Harcourts Yip did themselves proud through their on-going sponsorship but in particular their generous contribution of fantastic champagne and a gift basket for the lucky draw, last night (won by Richard’s golf wife, Graeme…hmmmm). Thanks heaps Anita, Richard, Natalie and James! The golf was close with Karen Simcox taking out the top prize on 22 STB, followed closely by Jo Hurst, Brigitte Boenisch-Brednich, Graeme Couper, and Tim Brosnahan on 21, and in 3rd Doug Calhoun and Wayne Cook on 20. This Thursday we trialled out some additional fun events with the Longest Putt on the 2nd (won by Jo Hurst) and the option for players to select one hole in their round where they could choose to putt to the hole without a flag. Other competitions had Wayne Cook winning the Longest Drive for men on the 8th, Jo Hurst winning longest drive for women (also on the 8th) and Antony Kennedy winning the NTP on the 5th. Many of the players contributed some awesome food to accompany the fine wine – an excellent night was had by all! Twilight starts again on the 10th of January. Merry Xmas and Happy New Year from the Twilight Crew!

Interclub Update

Preparation for the 2019 season is progressing well with the following activities…

· 46 members have expressed interest in playing interclub are now part of the Interclub Squad. Approximately one third dont want to play regularly and prefer to assist when needed.

· Survey Monkey was used to survey the 46 squad members on their preferences for the 2019 season. The following key information gained from this will be used to shape the 2019 season: have fun, be competitive but don’t overdo it, get shirts, player of the day but no bunny, provide coaching and include social events.

· Trials were conducted on the 9th and 16th December 2018 and used a match play format to simulate competitive interclub play. Over the two trials, 18 played on the 9th and 24 on the 16th. Of the 46 interclub squad members, 31 participated in the trials with 11 playing on both days. Representation across the three Divisions was led by Division 9 with 16 player rounds followed by Division 5 with 15 and Division 2 with 9. A review of the individual cards showed that in many cases there were periods of good scoring interrupted by a bad hole or two or three. That shows players have the ability to score. A third trial is planned for 13 January 2019.

· Our shirt sponsor for Division 5 is Mark Peck and for Division 9 Carl Beentjes. Thank you Mark (again) and Carl. The search for a sponsor for Division 2 continues.

· The Men’s Interclub Notice Board has been populated with 2019 information

· Top Ten Match Play Tactics article distributed to squad members

Cheers Geoff

Champion of Champions

Well done to our men’s club champions who fought bravely in the Champion of Champions event over 36 holes at Miramar a couple of weekends ago. Although none of our champions finished in the top placings, our team finished respectably mid table. Top club was Masterton, with the competition effectively over by lunch time after Kerry Mountcastle shot 63 on the first 18!

Sponsor Speak

Our 16th hole is sponsored by New World Karori who in the lead up to Christmas have been offering some great specials. They are open right through to Christmas Eve and ideally situated for you to purchase your Christmas groceries on your way home from golf this weekend.

Merry Christmas to all our members

Happy golfing, play safely,

Your KGC Committee