Mount Juliet Golf Notes

Is it ever going to stop freezing or will golf courses recover from the prolonged months of continuous sub zero temperatures. Like every other course Mount Juliet has had to endure its fair share of Artic weather and it now has the not so envious reputation of holding the record for this Winter of having the coldest recorded temperature in Ireland when on 7th January the gauge dipped to – 16.3 degrees.

The Winter Series got off the ground last Thursday after a three hour frost delay when the competition reverted to a shotgun start at 1pm. A Tipperary team comprising of four Clonmel members, ably led by Trevor Gough from Coolmore Stud, led the qualifiers with a good score of 90 points. The winners had nines of 47 and 43 points respectively and just held on by a point from another Munster dominated team who finished on 89 points.

Things looked rosy for the Clonmel contingent until they reached the 16th hole and here they could only muster 2 points between all four players. Again they had a rather shaky finish as they could only muster 4 points on the 18th where three scores could count. The runners-up also had cause to rue their finish as they could only scramble 2 points on the 15th and they scored 47 and 42 points respectively for both nines. But at the end of the day it was the Clonmel who qualified for the final in three weeks time.

The second round of the Winter Series fell victim to the weather last Wednesday as did the 1st round. After a lovely fine day on Tuesday, Mother Nature certainly had a bad night somewhere the night before and aired any grievances she had on the golfers the following day. After a slow start she made up for it by unleashing her full compliment of rain on the countryside. With a full timesheet for the day the teams braved the elements before eventually the course was closed due to impossible conditions. Amongst the finishers came a trio of players from three corners of the country and they made every post a winning post by returning a fantastic score in the conditions to win by 2 shots. They had a dream start by having birdies at the first two holes and were three under after five holes. They finished the good start by having another birdie on the ninth to go out in 32 shots gross. They continued their great round by having another four birdies at the 10th, 12th , 13th and 14th holes and so completed the back nine in another 32 shots to score 64 gross and this coupled with their handicap allowance of 1.8 brought about their winning score of 62.2 and so qualified for the Grand Final in March.

Because of the eventual cancellation for some players of the competition on Wednesday it is intended to run a replacement one on Tuesday 2nd January 2007 and this will be a 3 person scramble as well.

On Sunday last the member/guest day was held and the format was a fourball betterball stableford. This resulted in a win for the pairing of Stephen Price and his friend Darren Kelly who returned a fine score of 45 points with nines of 20 and 25 points respectively. They won by 2 shots from Bill Hutchinson and David Duggan who had 43 points with nines of 21 and 22 points respectively. Bill and David had a shot to spare over James J. and Sean Brett. The winners had a gross score of 38 shots on the first nine holes which represented two over par but they turned on the style on the second nine holes by returning a gross score of 33 shots with birdies on the 10th, 12th and 15th holes and dropped no shot to par on the back nine.

Next Sunday sees the first of the Winter competitions with a 16 holes singles stableford confined to members. As and from 1st November, like last year, there will be a two tee start over the Winter months and play does not commence each day until 10.00am and the timesheet finishes at 12.10pm.
Next week sees the 3rd round of the Winter Series with a Fourball Stableford Betterball down for decision on next Tuesday 7th and hopefully the weatherman will be a bit kinder than on the previous two days. Tee times are still available by phoning 056/7773071 or 7773064.