Veterans Golf Club of Victoria

A celebration of our 2019 70^th birthday at Spring Valley 18^th November 2019

Club Culture

When the Victorian Veterans Golf Club was formed in 1949 the Club played its first match at Spring Valley a relatively new Club in Dingley. Not only the first match but Spring Valley remained the Club's playing Course for its weekly golf for some time.

Hence, it was seen as fully apropriate that the Club should celebrate its 70^th birthday at Spring Valley.

Financial arrangements for the day were subject to long discussions at the Committee before a final balance was struck. Captain Harold named the event Conor Brown to reflect the help he had from Conor in organising the event.

The Course

Spring Valley is one of the lesser known 'Melbourne Sandbelt courses'. But that's not to say it's not amongst the best. The fairways were faultless, the bunkers consistent and not overdone, the greens were testing, but fair.

The course appearance reflecting 70 years of being a golf course was classic with some of the most attractive trees you could imagine.

Reflecting the fact that it was designed as a members course it does not suffer from the modern trend sponsored by the ball industry of putting water everywhere.

Instead the penalty for leaving the fairways is trees, dry rough indispersed with sticks and ankle length grass. A snake warning was observed on one hole. At least with this arrangement if you lose your ball in the rough you'll probably find another while looking for it.

The players

We had a full field of 72 players giving each four their own tee for the shotgun start. Disappointingly the combination of several players ignoring the request by the Captain to be on time** as well as those who failed to pay in advance made life very difficult for the starters.

(**Two players had a reasonable excuse that their GPS units had taken them to a Members Only entrance to the course.)

Brahmagupta Golf

Unfortunately again, the overload on the starters made it difficult to ensure all groups had a score sheet for the Brahmagupta and that all players designated to complete the sheet were fully aware of the task involved.

However, 14 of a possible 18 scoresheets were returned and one group reported their stableford scores which were low enough that they could not have won.

Analysing the scores

This was a learning exercise for all of us. Outstanding errors included:

• Failing to put any names on the scoresheet-two groups including the winners.
• Using the stroke score instead of the stableford score. With amongst other things, a 9 off the stick multiplied by 4 as the worst score this group ended up with a total of 404! Note on behalf of the Captain: There is no way in a stableford competition that a player shouldn't have picked up long before reaching 9!!!!
• Using a hard pencil which was so light it was near impossible to read the numbers
• It is not reasonable to expect accurate arithmetic from all scorers during the course of the game. As the system does not require that the hole scores be related to the individual players it is easier to do and to check if the scores are recorded from best to worst, or worst to best on each hole. Also, do not write in the stroke score, it just creates clutter.

The highest submitted score was 107 which included a back nine score of 61

The two dozen balls for the event donated by Laurie Comerford were distributed to:

1. Roger Selwood, Jeff Stevens, Barry Pollock and Bill Frey a ball each for their score of 57 on the front nine
2. John Field, Malcolm Turner, Noel Manning and Laurie Comerford a ball each for their score of 56 on the back nine.
3. As we have not been able to identify the winners as yet, 16 balls are held in reserve and could well be used for a further Brahmagupta event next year in conjunction with the Captain/Presidents Trophy.

The full scores can be found at the end of this page.

In the Clubhouse

We comfortably filled the Clubhouse and enjoyed the usual light lunch and bar service

The main raffle for 4 rounds at Spring Valley was won by Harold Hayes (a not inappropriate win for all the work Harold does as Club Captain), while Kel Tyler generously donated back a voucher for four rounds at Lang Lang. This will now be subject of a second draw at Waterford Valley.