By Keith Field

ST MELLION GOLF CLUB SENIORS ‘THE FOSSILS’

THE dry weather of late continued on Thursday without any frost effects to allow the first trophy event of the year to get underway with a full entry and no temporary greens.

The foursomes competition is a celebration of Cornwall’s patron St Piran in which all competitors receive a pasty even if their scores do not affect the leaderboard.

The course had dried out to permit the ball to run well and the greens had truly speeded up even though they still showed signs of recent maintenance.

Even as the greens had been ‘ironed’, the shallow dimples that had not fully recovered did cause some ‘interesting’ deflections on otherwise well-struck putts.

The leaderboard demonstrated a number of teams did manage to master the conditions well, but not many of the 25 teams taking part.

Five recorded Stableford scores at or above 36, but these are the Fossils!

It came as no big surprise that there would be at least one bolter who would be streets ahead of the field when captain Rob Parsonage announced the winners.

In-fact there were two, Alec Brannan and John Clements scored an outstanding 42 but Chris de Beaufort and Sophocles Ioannou took the top spot with an incredible 43 points.

To emphasise just how well the leaders scored, the average score for the competition from the teams submitting their cards was 32.5.

Results: 1 Sophocles Ioannou/Chris de Beaufort – 43pts; 2 Alec Brannan/John Clements – 42; 3 Alan Melvern/Paul Osborne – 36; 4 Malcolm Smith/Dave Morton – 36; 5 Mike R Newton/Norman Wreford – 36.

With the first trophy of the year completed successfully after so many blank weeks, thoughts are now turning towards the oncoming match season with the first fixture scheduled being an away trip to Trevose.