| Date: | 20th March 2009 |
| Venue: | Aldeburgh GC |
Spring Meeting at Aldeburgh on 20th and 21st March 2009.
Full of anticipation, about fifteen of us left our various homes to drive to Thorpeness GC for the traditional Roll-Up on the day before the Spring Meeting. The weather had been perfect in the South-East, but sadly a grey mist greeted us somewhere near Chelmsford and the rest of the day was grey, breezy and decidedly chilly. This did wonders for sweater sales at Thorpeness! We had a very jolly informal round and some good and some bad golf was displayed by us all.
In the evening we gathered in Thorpeness’s bar and soon it became apparent that a very noisy group from another (possibly less elegant) Society was gradually drowning out all Tonbridgian voices. Apart from wondering whether these chaps could be rented for the Hewitt (by other schools) it was felt that we might dine in the bar rather than share the dining room with them. This was simply because of the noise they were making - they were actually perfectly nice people albeit somewhat tattooed! Some OTGS members are nowadays sporting hearing aids and they had claimed that they could not hear what the Hon. Secretary was saying. I am sure that it was just a rumour that their hearing aids had been turned off in advance anyway!
Seated in splendid isolation in the bar we enjoyed a very jolly supper and gradually more and more of our members arrived and joined us.
The Friday morning, the first day of the Meeting, dawned bright but chilly. With an early start we had ordered breakfast at 6.45am but the chef did not arrive until 7.15. No problem though, we were being admirably looked-after by a resourceful waitress and she got us all going on beans, bacon and sausages. So, duly replete, we arrived in good time at Aldeburgh. It was looking a picture in the sunshine with its dreaded gorse in vigorous yellow flower. Gordon Hogg the Secretary greeted us as old friends and play got under way at 8.00 from both the 1st and 10th Tees. Our Friday morning event was a Stableford singles event for the Captain’s Prize played on the most perfect Spring morning. For the third year in a row our Spring Meeting was blessed with glorious weather and yet, despite the perfect conditions and super greens, Aldeburgh is a tough course and the scoring was generally poor. It was so easy to drop two or three shots on a hole with a wayward drive and the new bunkering was often admired (generally from inside the bunkers). We played against bogey but all the same a competitive score looked like being about 34 points until Adrian Cooper posted a 36 which stayed in the lead until the last match came in with Ian Mackintosh modestly asking if 41 points was any good. For the second consecutive year Adrian had the disappointment of seeing the Captain’s Prize snatched away at the last minute – and by a huge margin once again! Chris Charlton took third place with 35 points. As seems almost traditional in this event, the four Hewitt players present did poorly on the first day totalling 117 points between them against bogey.
In the afternoon foursomes for the President’s Prize there was a tight battle for the winner’s enclosure with Robin and Christopher Berkeley just edging out William Marle and Hugh Evans on countback with 36 points. Trevor and David Mills came third with 32.
The AGM passed in a flash and, because Ian was unable to be with us on the Saturday, the Captain presented him with his Prize at the AGM. Very soon after the AGM we went into dinner, resplendent in black tie. A good meal with the luxury of a half-lobster apiece, for those whose diet permitted it, was much enjoyed. David Biddle and Gerald Corbett regaled us with their speeches which amused us all greatly. David was his old Suffolk self as the principal speaker and Gerald was terrific particularly since he had only been asked to sing for his supper some seven hours earlier. In every way we very much missed our revered President. He was to have (a) spoken at the Dinner, (b) presented his President’s Prize and (c) made all the matches a perfect number. His withdrawal from the meeting via the e-mail, which awaited the Hon. Secretary on his arrival at lunchtime the previous day, was a great sadness to us all - but also a serious irritation to the Hon. Secretary whose carefully laid plans had been blasted out of the water! But when did we last have a Spring Meeting without a Clay being present? Certainly it must have been well before the old King died. Still, Geoff’s absence made the prizes easier to win (even though the Hon. Secretary, as an additional chore, was left to purchase the President’s Prize – and in his ire he had to be restrained from ordering a full set of irons for each of the players in the winning pair).
In the Medal on the Saturday morning (another beautiful morning with the early frost disappearing just in time) there was quite a lot of good golf - much of which for many was again spoiled by just two or three bad holes. There was a good turnout and encouragingly seven players aged under 30 were present. The best golf was played by Jonathan Hubbard in a stiffening breeze. He won the Boucher Cup (scratch) with a good 74 and Jason Foster and Chris Lloyd took 2nd and 3rd places with 76s. In the handicap medal for the Field Cup, George Hubbard delighted us with an excellent 86-16=70. He shared the trophy with Jonathan Hubbard (76-4=70) and indeed beat Jonathan to the first prize on countback. This time the first four places in the scratch event were filled by the Hewitt players present. They had evidently been stung by the comments made about their poor play on the Friday!
The Saturday afternoon Stableford foursomes proved to be something of an endurance test. Nine players dropped out pleading exhaustion. The suspicion that we were not all as highly tuned as we had thought was endorsed when the first three pairs all turned out to be aged 32 or less. Jason Foster, partnered by Richard Sumner, completed a very good day and won with 39 points against bogey, with Jamie Ford and Oli Knight in second place. The two young Eds, Short and Parry, came third with 31 points.
It had been a really enjoyable trip to Aldeburgh whose Captain and Secretary, along with Tim Rowan-Robinson from Thorpeness, were our guests at Friday evening’s dinner. We were delighted to see them and were particularly grateful to Aldeburgh for allowing us to hold our meeting on a Friday and a Saturday. Their members made us very welcome and many OTGS members expressed their wish to return before too long.
The following took part in some or all of the Meeting : C.Vokins, C.Berkeley, R.Berkeley, D.Biddle, O.Boreham, C.Charlton, A.Cooper, G.Corbett, J.Crates, H.Evans, J.Ford, J.Foster, I.Fotheringham, P.Garner, D.Godwin, D.Golding-Wood, D.Hawkins, D.Hubbard, G.Hubbard, J.Hubbard, M.Hughes, O.Knight, M.Latter, C.Lloyd, I.Mackintosh, W.Marle, D.Mills, T.Mills, A.Monteuuis, P.Nicholson, E.Parry, R.Partridge, R.Proctor, P.Saggers, E.Short, A.Sims, J.Steed, R.Sumner, J.Thompson,