Captains April 2019 Report .

CAPTAIN’S LOG APRIL 2019

I am delighted to say that the summer season has begun in grand style.

The course is beginning to take shape through the work done by Wayne and the greens staff and overseen by the new Greens committee. Given some rain (ideally overnight) and some increased warmth then the improvement will be even more dramatic.

Competitions continue apace. Since October 1st 47 competitions have been run and at this point I must specifically mention the major contribution of the Competitions Committee, Secretary Ian Cassap, John Walvin and Bernie Munroe. The traditional Sunday summer competitions have all started well and the sell out Good Friday Shotgun was particularly successful. The progress in using BRS to run our internal competitions led to a decision being made to trial dispensing with drawn competitions in favour of our standard 4 ball sign ups. The field of 174 in our 1st Medal was testimony to the benefits of so doing.

Two additional Order of Merit competitions have been introduced in the men’s stroke play events. Scoring is very much based on the score achieved on the day and points are awarded which relate to that.

The draws for the knockout competitions are all published and no doubt matches are currently being arranged.

Men’s Team. The season started with a team photo featuring Lucy Elliott from long-term sponsors Elliott Westland Insurance Services. There have also been two warm up sessions supported by our Pro. Bradley. Also we were very fortunate to be invited to play the current Division One champions Brancepeth in a warm up match and gained a very creditable 4-4 draw at Brancepeth. The league season starts  with a visit to Washington.

The Nerga Inter team(hcp 8-15) captained by Brian Storey are up and running with a 6th place finish at Wearside. Unfortunately the Rabbits Team have had to be withdrawn from their league due you lack of support. However not before Alan Gurney had achieved a magnificent winning 47 points in the first match at Seaham.

Our ladies Daily Mail Foursomes representatives Chris Bell and Chris Bryson are through to the second round and play Ramside on Saturday 11th May. The club hosted a very successful County Ladies competitionwith Yvonne Setchell finishing as runner up in the silver division following her return from injury.

The Junior Team programme has begun under the guidance of Joanna Ellison and Gary Jones and congratulations to Dan Ellison who won the County Junior Knockout qualifying competition and to date has reached the semi final of the knockout stages.

Vets matches and internal competitions have also begun and they will be hosting their first Open very early next month.

The Committee are are reviewing BRS to consider the feasibility of introducing some casual booking times for members .

Please make every effort to fill in the club survey and support and encourage others to do so. This will play a major part in determining the club’s future priorities in setting short, medium and long term goals.

Finally it is very encouraging to see the number of society bookings coming in. Although this reduces tee time availability it does bring in significant additional revenue.

Wishing everyone a great golfing summer.

Dave Bryson

Club Captain 2019