Greetings golfers,

The second round of The Open Championship is now under way and I'm sure like most years it will be as exciting as ever! My picks for this week were Rose, Speith, with outside bets on Hatton, Cabrera Bello, and Bland, let's hope I haven't donated it all to Paddy Power!

Team Update

A busy week of club knockout matches with John Sowden's Wilding Cole and Dave Allen's Blackheath Trophy sides both in action. The Wilding Cole side had a tricky away tie at Lamberhurst, things didn't get off to the best of starts as the first 3 matches went to the home team. Pete Sausse and Ed McCoy steadied the ship with a half and a win between them, but unfortunately that was all the points LPGC were to earn as Lamberhurst took the last 3 matches to win 6.5-1.5.

The Blackheath Trophy side were at home to Royal Blackheath, again the opening 3 matches only yielded half a point, Darren Field, Martyn Gilbey and Brian Smith all took their matches so again it was going to go down to the final match. That match was Roy Buck, who was one down with 2 to play and only a win would see the team progress as a draw would mean a loss on away goals.

Roy holed a great putt across the green at 17 to square the match, he then hit a solid iron shot pin high at 18. His opponent duffed his shot which pitched short of the ditch, and then bounced the ditch, his chip finished 12 feet from the hole, Roy putted up to 3 feet but his opponent holed his 12 footer which gave the away side a 4-4 winning result.

 
Millennium Bowl

Some very good scores in last weekend's Millennium Bowl, considering it was a limited field event. Leading the way with a gross 68 nett 65 was Alfie Hickman, beating James King by one, with Les Clarke a further 3 shots back on nett 69. Nice playing Alf!

Ladies stableford & Ruth Jones trophy

42 ladies turned out on Tuesday for this stableford event, Kim Wildman took the top honours in division 1 with 36 points, one ahead of Evelyn Collington and 2 ahead of Priya Bhatia.

A fantastic 39 points from Angeli Khanna in division 2 was 2 ahead of Diana Roberts and Julie Allen, but the best score of the day come from newcomer Lynn Gimson in division 3 who recorded 40 points to win her division by 3 points from Carol Helm.

Lombard Trophy

Graham Illife and I played at Walton Heath on Tuesday as he won the club qualifier back in April, it is a betterball pro-am event with the winners going through to a grand final in Portugal. Graham got us off to a steady start as I was clearly still half asleep, but after a few untimely drop shots we reached the turn in level par and an exceptional back nine would be required. After a couple of near misses, a birdie at 13, eagle at 14 and a birdie at 15 gave us a glimmer of hope. But, as putts slipped past on the final few holes, -4 was our total, which did hold the lead for half of the day until several teams overtook us and we finished in a share of 10th place.

Pro's Day

The list is on the board for Pro's day and is filling fast, get your names up quick before it's too late. Also the Grand Draw board is in the shop, tickets are £5 each, the winner will win a new set of Titleist irons which will also be presented on the day.