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Veterans Golf Club of Victoria

May 2018 Newsletter

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President:

Please note that due to a significant weather delay, today's Committee's meeting was deferred till next Monday given that members would be returning later to the clubhouse. Consequently President Donald was not at Cranbourne today as he continues his recovery.

Our members attended Cranbourne Club for the Grant Haselgrove Perpetual Trophy competition which was the usual stableford competition format. We would like to thank the club for the use of their excellent facilities, and their generous donation of our main raffle prize.  The lunch and clubhouse facilities were thoroughly enjoyed by the members, as was the golf course in what were, at least initially, somewhat foggy weather conditions.

Our members have been informed that Michael Montgomery, a member of the Vets since 2015, passed away recently on Sunday 29th April after a long illness. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mike's family. The members stood for a minute's silence to pay their respects to Mike.

Number of Players / Guests:

Today we had another large turnout today which is good to see! There were a total of 63 players inclusive of John Molloy's guest Chris Mara who received a complimentary golf ball, online membership applicant John Chin and Chris Thorne who renewed his membership after several months away.

As is our custom, we extend a very warm welcome to our guest, inviting him to consider joining the Vets as a member.

Please note that when members bring a guest along, please ask them for their Golflink number. Otherwise provide our Handicapper, Ray Desmond, with a guideline as to their playing standard.

Apologies:

There were 12 apologies this month: Peter Bimbi, Bernie Coyle, James Flaagan, Chris MacGeorge, Alan Millard, Roland Neef, Stan Odachowski, Ian Richards, Jeff Stevens, John Sutherland, Malcolm Turner & Kelvin Tyler.

We look forward to seeing the 'boys' back on course soon, together with a few other members who are currently a bit poorly. We wish you all a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing you back at Keysborough GC on Monday 4th June 2018 at 8am. (winter tee time)

Starters today:

Donald and the members thank Joe Cirnigliaro, Trevor Bottomley and John Molloy for a job well done in getting such a large field away smoothly in difficult circumstances caused by the weather. As previously mentioned, we cannot proceed without volunteers to run these events every month, so please consider helping as it is a bit of fun and you will get to know more members of the club. Now that there is a requirement for 3 starters, the need for volunteers becomes even more pressing. Please help your Club.

Membership News:

Picture

Our longest serving member, Hughie Churchward hasn't been in the best of health recently, so a few of us went along to join Hughie and his wife Isabel for morning tea. In addition to being one of a few life members, Hughie has also clocked up 30 years as a member of this Club (joined in June 1988). Ray Underwood, a fellow life member, presented Hughie with his 30-year service badge. It was a lovely morning and hopefully Hughie continues to improve. Hugh is 92 years young this year! (I should know - 20 years younger!)

We recently had a suggestion from one of our members, John Molloy, that it may help communications within the Club if we added a photograph to each member's contact details given that the Club membership numbers are nudging up towards the 100 mark. "Put a face to the name" so to speak! As you know, each member's contact details are accessible by any member of the Club. Unless it is the wish of a substantial majority of the members, we will not proceed. Both Laurie Comerford and John Molloy spoke to the proposal at the end of today's meeting and the members via a show of hands were in strongly in favour of proceeding.

If we were to proceed, each member would be asked to email our Webmaster Laurie Comerford with a straightforward head and shoulders 'shot', clearly spelling out your name on the email to simplify Laurie's task in loading the photographs to the correct member's details. If you are unable to send a photograph in this manner, it is not a problem. Over lunch at each monthly event, Laurie and possibly some nominated helpers will take your photograph (and name details).
If we can get enough participation by the members (say at least 60% or thereabouts) then we will complete the task over the coming weeks. My thanks to Laurie and John.

'House of Golf' Sponsorship / New Members / Club Merchandise:

As always, I state the usual reminders on the importance of our sponsorship from the House of Golf (Moorabbin), who are subsidising our monthly winners' vouchers. Please go and see Innes at his new super store near DFO, Moorabbin Airport in Cheltenham.

I also mention the need to continually seek out new members (we ain't getting any younger!) to help the club grow further, in addition to compensating for the natural attrition in our membership numbers that goes with being a seniors club.

Please wear our Club colours at all our events. Our Marketing Manager, Daryl Edwards is happy to provide the necessary items of clothing.

Special Achievements:

It was a modest month in terms of achievements with a few successes being noted.
Here they are, in no particular order;

  • John Hiscock (the 'Raffleman!) won the comp at Long Island GC. on Tuesday 17th April with a total of 42pts. John says he was relieved with the win as its been 'a long time between drinks'! ( Probably because it was his round!)
  • Gary Walters won at Cerberus GC. on Thursday 19th April with a total of 43 pts playing off a handicap of 22.9. Terrific golf Gary!
  • Following up on last month's rumour that we had a hole-in-1 somewhere. Turns out it is true! Terry Brownscombe confirms that he is the lucky chap who had a splendid ace at the par 3 third hole at Keysborough on Wednesday 21st March. It will be a great memory Terry!

Hearty congratulations are extended to our worthy winners!
My apologies for any achievements that were overlooked.

If you do win, please let me know (call or text 0414 446 636, or email me at dmacd8@hotmail.com
as we sometimes miss the notices.

Please note that only those achievements based on Golflink handicaps should be reported.

Club Merchandise :

Our Marketing Manager, Daryl Edwards, is always happy to arrange the delivery of Club merchandise at any of our events. If you need club shirts, sweaters etc.  please contact Daryl.

Vets Club Website :

Lots of news on the web site to follow.

Question time :

Captain Harold asked if the were any questions and there were none.

Web survey report.

We were pleased to find that 56 members posted submissions to our web survey. Further statistics from the report are included in the Appendix.

Outcome of the survey

Feedback from members has been most useful for planning actions about the web site. The following actions have been approved.

  1. Publish full match scores

    Handicapper Ray prepares a score sheet each month reflecting the days full results. An image of this sheet will be posted with a link from the newsletter. The first link is in this newsletter.

  2. Publish Committee minutes

    A survey was made of other Clubs and very few publish their Committee Minutes. However, many do publish summaries for member information and the Club will do this. The full details of how we do this are under consideration as several members do not have internet access.

  3. Publish Member stories

    The newsletter editor always has the capabilities of doing this. However, the stories would have to be prepared by others and we've seen little enthusiasm for such a task.

  4. Play with a Committee member

    The playing groups at any event are determined on the spot by the starters, primarily related to order of arrival. Clearly members with guests play together and there a further aim of creating groups of players with a spread of handicaps.

    It is open to any member to request to play with any other member and Committee members would welcome approaches by other members to play with them.

  5. Publish Golf tips, etiquette, rules.

    There are vast numbers of online pages including explanatory videos about these items.

    As it would be plagiarism to clipboard this information to our newsletter, instead the Newsletter editor will add a link to an item in each newsletter. As an example, Allan Patterson, the Pro at Patterson river has prepared a set of videos describing how to play each hole at the course. One of these would seem a good item for the month before we pay there.

    For this month our tip leads to a web site with a huge amount of information about playing golf. View a video on golf etiquette here.

    In addition, a link has been added on the links page to the R&A rules web site.

  6. Publish Member photographs

    This was not in the survey, but arose from a lucid request and explanation to the members at Cranbourne by John Molloy.

    There was strong enthusiasm for the idea at the meeting and if this is carried through to actions by members it will go ahead. (Late note: Laurie has 14 photos ready.)

    Member actions:

    • Take a head and shoulders photograph of yourself - preferably with a light coloured plain background.
    • Email the photo to Laurie at laurie.comerford@westnet.com.au Add your name to the email, to be sure Laurie gets it right.
    • For various reasons, some members may not be able to do this. Don't worry! Just see Laurie at the next meeting and request he takes your photo.

captain

Results:

Overall winner:

Declan Stephenson (21) with 39 points won the Grant Haselgrove Trophy

Our winners receive a $40 House of Golf voucher for their effort.

Grade winners

A Grade:  Donald Barber (13)  36 points

B Grade:  Noel Valle (25)  37 points

C Grade:  Philip Horsburgh (33)  37 points

Nearest to the Pin:

3rd hole: Donald Barber  8th hole: Laurie Comerford

12th hole: John Hiscock  14th hole: Donald Barber

Balls down the line:

36 points  Gary Finnis (24)  Christopher Thorne (22)  Trevor McGilton (33)

35 points  David Heraud (26)  David Vine (15)  Ray Desmond (23)  Trevor Bottomley (15)

34 points  John Farrow (35)

NAGA Award:

Roger Huxstep

Door prize Winners:

Laurie Comerford celebrated his good day at Cranbourne by winning the raffle allowing him and three of his mates to play again at Cranbourne.

Birthday boys for May 2018

Congratulations and best wishes to our members whose birthday falls in May

2nd  Allen McAuliffe  61

7th  Colin Holmes  58

8th  Don Thomson  70

9th  Ray Underwood  79

12th  Ross Wilson  71

17th  Gary Morland  66

19th  Karl Lindberg  77

25th  Johannes Tetteroo  67

27th  Bill Cribbes  69

The joke file 'joke/joke201805.html' is not yet available

Next event:

Keysborough for the David Vine Trophy starting at 8:00 on 04th June

 Gary Finnis ☎ 03 9583 1224 Peter Ross ☎ 0418176303 or 0418 176 303 Gary Walters ☎ 03 5983 8839 or 0427 124 229

Appendix - Web survey statistics

There were 56 submissions.

Captain's query:

38 members indicated they would play in a special event as a non-scheduled event.

Level of comfort with electronic items such as computers, tablets and smart phones

Of those that answered the question:

More than two thirds are comfortable using web sites and only a few members need more confidence.  To those members in particular, thank you for responding.

How often do you use the web site?

Members on average access the web site more than once a month.  They use it for the newsletters, checking home courses and the booking sheet.

What members read.

Most members have looked around the whole site, but with an emphasis on the newer pages, e.g. the current newsletter.

What equipment is used to read the web site.

Only 7 members indicated they use a smartphone to access the site.  From a workload aspect this does not warrant a significant effort to make the site more smartphone friendly than it is now.

Knowledge about the web site.

This question was used as much as anything to advise members about features of the web site.

The newsletter

When read

Only two members indicated they rarely read the newsletter and most read it soon after notification of availability.

What is read?

Most members read the whole newsletter with over two thirds reading the birthdays as the lowest interest item.

The jokes

42 members commented the jokes were about right and none thought they were too crude or not crude enough.

New newsletter Content

Requests for newsletter content requested by more than one member included.

  • Tips, rules and etiquette.
  • Members stories.
  • Match results.
  • Member photos.

Interestingly one member said:

Jokes not necessary. Detract from the whats important.

About using the web site.

A third of the members had trouble with passwords.
Two thirds of members used the booking sheet.
More than two thirds of members found making a booking easy.
A quarter members had used the site to get another member's contact details.

Problems using the web site.

Members have the whole range of expected difficulty finding their way around.

Learning about the web site.

No members offered help with the web site.

More information on web site

The most requested items were Committee minutes and full match results.

Again one member thinks we should reduce the web site to a booking system only.

Club Business cards.

This question was included merely as a reminder to members about the cards. Half the members committed to use the cards in future.

Attending a site demonstration.

A third of members indicated they would attend a demonstration about how to use the site.

Laurie proposes to do this at Patterson River where he can get access to a projector etc.