President:

President Donald welcomed us to Waterford Valley Golf Club for the Thord Lorich Trophy stableford competition. He asked all present to thank the club for the use of their facilities, and their generous donation of our main raffle prize. It was a warmish morning following the recent hot weather. Fortunately with the early start the members were back in the clubhouse in time to avoid the main heat of the day. The course at Waterford Valley was in very good condition. The lunch and the clubhouse facilities were thoroughly enjoyed by the members.

The President apologised to those members that were affected by the lunch arrangements at Rossdale GC last month. A shortage of food, and a delayed lunch were unacceptable, especially after 4 or 5 hours of golf. Please consider the other members when loading up your plate. We've had many years of good service at Rossdale so hopefully the chat our Captain had with the Rossdale staff will prevent any repetition of today's experience.

Our raffle is a very successful fundraiser for the club, given the good work done by Daryl Edwards and the irrepressible John Hiscock, ably supported by our Captain Harold Hayes who continues to secure the extremely attractive main prize from our generous host clubs.
These funds are used directly to keep our matchday costs competitive (green fees, lunch) so please continue to support our raffle.

Number of Players / Guests:

We had a good turnout today, with 56 players involved in the competition. A late withdrawal for today's event was Past President Bernie Coyle who was prevented from travelling from Warragul by the Bunyip State Park bushfires. Safety first Bernie! Unusually, there were no guests today. Donald announced that Peter Garbellini joined the club and gave him a warm welcome.

Apologies:

There were 15 apologies this month:
Rex Buckeridge, Jim Collins, Gary Finnis, James Flaagan, George Giles, Alex Johnson,John Killmister, Karl Lindberg, Chris MacGeorge, Stuart MacLennan, Alan Millard, Stan Odachowski, Lindsay Quennell, Barry Taylor & Malcolm Turner.

Starters today:

Donald and the members thanked Colin Wiseman, Noel Manning and Jeff Taylor for doing a good job of getting the groups away. Please take pride in your club and always ensure that you "keep up with the group in front of you". That is the number one priority we have in terms of efficient golf. ('ready golf')

As previously mentioned, we cannot proceed without volunteers to run these events every month, so please consider helping out as a starter, as it is a bit of fun and you will get to know so many more members of the club. Please help your Club.

Membership News:

Two of our long-standing members are facing significant health issues, so our thoughts are with Hugh Churchward and Peter Ross. Unfortunately we are all of an age where these issues come up, so we hope for the best possible outcomes to all our members who are doing it tough.

Donald reminded the members that the annual subscription fee ($30) for 2019 was due and must be paid by all members by the end of the first quarter. To do so, members can either pay by cash at our April event at the latest, by giving the money to our Club Treasurer, David Vine or by using EFT. ( Click here. to see the Club Bank account address. )  If members choose this method, please ensure that you enter your full name and the words '2019 subs' in the reference field so that we can clearly identify the payee.

Our next golfing event will be the 4BBB team competition at Churchill Park / Waverley GC, on Monday 8th April at 7.15am for the Captain / President's trophy.

Spurred on by John Molloy, with assistance from Laurie Comerford, we continue to make progress towards completion of our Members Contact system, via the loading of member's photographs. If you have still to do this, and this includes our new members, please see either John Molloy or Laurie Comerford during our lunches at any of our events. It is important as the Club continues to grow, that we complete this initiative early in 2019. Communication is so important to the wellbeing of our Club, and the photographs help enormously. Get in touch with either John or Laurie by email or at matchday to set it up and they will make sure the job is done.

CoM Business:

Here is a report summary of the business matters being addressed by your Committee of Management.

1. Progress on our 70th anniversary Medal event at Spring Valley GC on Monday 18th November, 2019. Captain Harold has managed to secure our major raffle prize of a voucher for 4 friends to play a round of 18 holes at Spring Valley (visit their website). A tremendous opportunity to win this significant prize ($440 retail).
2. Changes in the rules of golf, effective 1st January 2019 need to be presented to the members where appropriate. Options on how best to do this are being discussed.
3. Following the discussion at the AGM on actively recruiting lady members, a much broader plan is being formulated to determine the optimum club membership vis-a-vis our ability to remain friendly and our ability to contain costs and booking ability at our host courses. More on this as we move through the year.
4. Succession planning as always is an evolving proposition, including a review of our current process.

Special Achievements:

In the past month or so, we have noted the following successes (in no particular order);

• John Currie recently won the 'D' grade championship at Rossdale GC. From being seeded last of the 4 qualifiers, to winning both ties 1 up at the last hole to take out the championship. Terrific golf John. Great achievement.
• Gary Finnis had a great round at Keysborough GC on Wed 20th Feb, scoring a total of 43 stableford points to finish runner-up in the comp. Well played Gary !
• Bernie Coyle won the 'D' grade championship recently at Drouin GC following a comp over 3 weeks. Congratulations Bernie. We'll need to arrange a shootout between Bernie and John Currie to see who the big 'D' is.
• Laurie Comerford, playing in a 9-hole twilight event at Patterson River GC on the 6th of Feb, scored a total of 23 points (h/cap 16) for the 9 holes. Impressive golf Laurie!

Congratulations to all our Vets winners.
Thanks go to all those who contributed the information.

Vets Web Site :

The website will be modified to remind members who intend to use a cart at the golf course that they must physically book the cart themselves by calling the pro-shop. Don't leave it to the last minute or you may find that all carts have been booked.

Question time :

There being no questions, President Donald handed over to our Captain. Harold Hayes.

Course review: - X-Golf - Mentone

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsor House of Golf (Mentone) all members at our last Christmas function were presented with one hour vouchers for the X-Golf course at Mentone.

Our Marketing Manager, Daryl made the effort and invited the Committee Members to take advantage of this gift.

For those who are not familiar with the X-Golf system, this is how it works:

The Course

• The Course is approximately 10m by 10m (carts not required)
• Comfortable seating and the bar are not far away
• The tee (as well as fairway, hazard & green) is carpet with an inbuilt height ajustable tee
• You get a ball by pressing the ball load button with your foot or club where-upon the ball arrives on the tee. You knock it off the tee for fairway and bunker shots as well as putting.
• You hit towards a soft screen with images of the course selected from a wide range of significant courses. Our four played Kingston Heath.
• Bad shots are penalised by the following shot being length reduced by 50% for bunkers, 10% for light rough etc.
• When you hit into the trees, you ball magically bounces back to the edge of the treed area and you receive a one shot penalty. Searching for balls is a thing of the past.
• Every shot is reported on by a wide range of statistics.
• Other than putting, we found that the distances we hit were far lower then our expectations from play on a real course. Typically about 15 to 20% lower. It was somewhat intriguing to be next to a guy bombing 280m drives on the system
• 'Gimme' putts are anything less than 2m
• Judging putting distances requires considerable experience of the system. The 2m 'gimme' may seem generous, but when from 2.5m you physically hit the putt 2m to find you are still 2.2m short, you get the idea
• If you set up a competition all play is strictly in order of furthest from the pin. None of this modern ready golf here!
• The maximum allowed score on each hole is twice par. We all experienced that.

Social

The system is highly social, similar to the way the Ten pin bowls works in that you can all stand around while partners play, tease one another and generally enjoy it. Just don't take the scoring too seriously.

The X-box staff are very helpful and set up your competitions or resolve any problems you may experience quickly and politely.

Getting there

In the evening the entrance is at the back of the HoG store. It could get boring waiting at the front of the store to be let in - in won't happen till 9am the next day!

Using your voucher

The gift vouchers allow hire of a course for one hour. Without the gift voucher it's $30/hour. Get a group of four together and you can play for 4 hours - or more likely 2 sets of 2 hours. Definitely recommended.

Lastly thanks to Daryl for organising the evening>

Laurie Comerford

p.s. If you would be interested in using your voucher to play X-golf with other Club members, but are unsure of who else may be interested, send me an email and I'll provide lists of those interested to all those who advise me of their interest.