By Keith Field

ST MELLION GOLF CLUB SENIORS – THE FOSSILS

AN EXTRAORDINARY week at the end of October started with the surprise announcement that captain Chris de Beaufort had tendered his resignation which in turn heralded further resignations and retirees from the committee for the end of this year.

Back on the golf course, the final day of October brought a dry day with a forecast of no rain for the Fossils playing in a pairs greensomes.

Although the temperature was above average, the 52 golfers found that the balls didn’t fly quite so far, but even so the format produced some very good scores with the winners being David Furse and Alec Brannan with 41 points, two ahead of Mike Richardson and Peter Lee who were two ahead of Mike Tamblin and Rob Parsonage, Alan Malvern and Ian Edwards and Will Carslaw who were third to fifth in that order.

Although the greensomes attracted the bulk of the players, top of bill on the day belonged to Andy Bryant, Alex Naismith, Bruce Sobey and Keith Field as they contested the final of the Summer 4BBB Knockout competition.

On paper, the two pairs were closely matched but Bryant and Naismith dominated.

For the first few holes, Sobey and Field fought back but could not establish a lead but their opponents, each playing some excellent shots that dovetailed beautifully to reward them by securing winning scores to take a three-hole advantage into the back nine.

That scoreline was soon extended to a winning four-hole lead that was never challenged whatever their opponents could throw at them and eventually won 4&3.

Monday, November 4 saw 25 Fossils assemble at Glynn Valley Crematorium to form a guard of honour and to celebrate the life of their friend, Brian Carnegie.

The next day brought the return match with Elfordleigh.

It is fair to say that the visitors had some difficulty in reading the greens and perhaps goes some way to explain the reversal in fortunes.

Back at St Mellion, the hosts cruised to an impressive 5.5 to 1.5 victory, but it soon became clear that there would be no repeat of that scoreline.

Until the half-way point it was looking good for the visitors but then matters took a turn for the worse with all games going the way of Elfordleigh.

On the day, Elfordleigh took the bragging rights 4.5 to 2.5 but on aggregate St Mellion were overall 8-6 winners.

Nearest the pin winners were Dave Wilson from the hosts and Colin Marshall for the visitors.

St Mellion were under new captain Rob Parsonage for the competition on November 7 which was a 6-6-6 where in the individual players could choose which tee they would play from but requiring six shots from each red, yellow and white tees.

Knowing the course enabled many of the 51 players to determine their strategy before setting out with a few favourites such as 7, 14 and 17 high on the numbers playing from the reds!

As usual a number of tees were relatively so close when arriving on the tee box that any number of strategies took a quick turn, but from the results a number of players got theirs spot on.

Top of the leaderboard with 38 points was Phil Cuming who by his performance should confirm he will be in the mix for a sombrero this year.

On 37 in second place was Pete Mehigan, probably still celebrating Argyle’s win over Portsmouth on Tuesday, and in third also on 37, David Furse.

Allan Evans, Rob Parsonage and Guy Pennington completed the top six, all with 36.