Senior Golfers Report

 

The Seniors played their monthly grail competition on Wednesday 25th August with a field of over fifty players. David Fellows won the August Grail with 41 points, with Nigel Brown in second place with 38. Three others, Gilbert Ellacombe, Suresh Vara and Roger Gilbert had 37 points.

David is pictured holding the trophy. Congratulations to them all. Obviously, those of us regularly visiting the lush rough during the round found it harder to score well, and several players, me included, found our handicaps going up!

 

As previously reported, the Seniors’ Team has had a successful year to date. Thanks to the energetic initiative of Peter Rold, Roehampton Club has also fielded an over 80s team. Peter tells me that the team has won matches at home and away against Huntercombe and Burhill.  In addition, there were two matches against Highgate over 77’s, one of which was won and one lost. The choice of age group was Highgate’s but this will be changed next year to over 80’s as this successful new arrangement with Highgate involves conventional Seniors matches as well.

 

This success was based on the consistently good play by our lower handicap players, Michael Godfrey, Michael Wright and Nigel Karmel, all of whom played in the majority of matches. They were ably supported by eight others who played on a varying number of occasions.

St George’s Hill and Camberley Heath were unable to raise sides this year despite playing us previously and efforts will be made to increase the fixture list, especially as five more active Roehampton players will have attained the venerable age of 80 next year. Approaches have therefore been made to Sunningdale, Coombe Hill, Denham and Royal Wimbledon but Peter is not optimistic of a favourable outcome.

The initiation of over 80’s matches coincides with the interest the R&A have shown in older golfers as they have commissioned a professional survey of the physical abilities of this group when compared with that of non-golfers. Unfortunately, the work has been delayed because tests carried out before Covid cannot be used for obvious comparative reasons. The survey will undoubtedly show the beneficial effect golf has on fitness levels and the R&A will therefore be promoting this result which have a beneficial effect on matches and an Open Competition for our oldies.

The seniors had their now regular Wednesday roll up this week, which took the form of a Texas scramble. The winning team was Geoff Bradford, Clive Nicholson and Tony Durrant – Congratulations!

Douglas Miller – Acting Chairman