March 2024 - Knebworth

It was great to get the season underway with a return to Knebworth.

Thanks to everyone who turned out. Julien's phobia of crowds meant he decided he wanted his own personal golf day the following day or so his diary said.

Our 2023 captain, Mr Roberts started with an address to award the prize for the champion golfer of 2023 which unsurprisingly went straight back to Neil Matthews. I think the trophy had been out of his control for about 2 mins before he put it back in his bag. Well done Neil!

Roy gave out 2 other prizes but I don’t think anyone knew what they were for. 

I think we were all in awe of Roy as he ventured straight into his Guinness Book for Records attempt for the “longest joke ever told”. Despite Digger falling asleep and the clocks going forward, Roy (who reminded me of a slightly older Duncan Norvell) carried on regardless. Regrettably he came up just short of the 1hr 52mins target but it was a cracking effort!!!!

Don’t worry if you missed it, Roy’s comedy corner will kick off each event this year!!!!!

It was great to see both Brian and George who attended the breakfast, hopefully they can get the clubs out some time in the future.

We welcomed 4 guests to this years event, Chris Birch (guest of Dan Gibson), Mark Thompson (guest of Mitch), James Cole (guest of Thomo) and Little Lee Thurston (my guest).

Lee arrived slightly late for the event as his wife had put his car keys on a shelf which the little fella couldn’t reach, despite this he went on to play some solid golf. Chris Birch, who is one of the trendiest golfers we have seen at KGS, hits a 4 iron like a rocket. I did catch Dave Goodge asking him where he got his gear from and thought it harsh when Chris told him they only went up to a XXL.

Mark and James put on some of the finest scoring seen from any guest, and they were in the group behind me. The last time I’ve seen a flag being hit as many times was when I watched a West Ham Utd shooting drill.

Onto the event, we played for the Frank Abbiss Trophy which was kindly sponsored by Cal and Jane Ferlisi. Frank was a popular member of the KGS in the 80’s, father to Jane and father-in-Law to Cal.

Their continuing sponsorship of this event is hugely appreciated.

The most surprising result of the day was that Neil Matthews won bugger all, which clearly blew most bets. There was insider knowledge given to a few that he was carrying an injury, so there needs to be a formal review of those who went against him on the betting card and cleaned up.

Thanks to Digger for running the betting on the day and apologies to all for the slight delay in announcing the winners, but there was a medical emergency where Digger had run out of Guinness, which interrupted the count.

Two of the par 3 nearest the pins went to the nicest man in golf “Todge” Clark.

The others went to the only slightly less nice John "Holmsey" Holmes and guest Mark Thompson.

Well done Chaps!

The main event was competitive apart from the winners Gary (Pablo) Marsh and John (Julio Chavez) Holmes who scored a ridiculously good 43 points - which was 6 points better than runners up Mitch and Thomo.

As they came up to collect their prizes over my shoulder I saw Neil sharpening his axe to cut both their handicaps.

As part of my quest to clean up golfing behaviour, well actually Damo's, Roy “the Grass” Roberts confessed that he witnessed another club throwing incident from our friend.

As such Damo will now have a banning order imposed that means he cannot stray more than ½ metre from his golf clubs at any time. This is slightly different from Dave Goodge's banning order that doesn’t allow him within 500 metres of a “Chicken George” Outlet.  

Hopefully see you all at Essendon on the 26th April.

Rich