San Miguel Golf Society

Another good SMGS turnout saw 42 members and two guests taking on the typical ex-Polaris course of Hacienda de Riquelme, with its multitude of bunkers, many surrounding greens, and ball devouring clumps of impenetrable grass. Anything not on a line approaching perfection was in trouble. Throw in some narrow fairways, water alongside three of those, unreadable recently fertilised greens with their chaotic undulations, and some horrible pin positions and, voila, the explanation for some very poor scoring. A course set up relatively short and some fine weather did not appear to help most players. However, the difficulties led to what is unheard of in the society, bronze category winners outscoring most of those in Gold and Silver.

Carmel McCann posted the best score of the day with 36 points, Chris Hamblett running her a close second with 35.

The outstanding Property Shop sponsored nearest the pin effort came from Brian Mulligan on the over-the-water 7th, leaving a putt of a mere one foot. Paul Kavanagh showed how up-and-down the game of golf can be, taking the Abacus’s bottle of Mike Kaylor sponsored excellent red vino, after having been amongst the winning scores last week in Las Ramblas, a very different course to Riquelme

Winning results, by category and in reverse order, were the following:

Bronze Category: 5th Mick Roscoe (31 on CB), 4th Mike Jordan (31 on CB), 3rd Neil Sheldon (34), 2nd Chris Hamblett (35) and 1st, with the day’s best score of 36 points, Carmel McCann.

Silver Category: 5th Mike Kaylor (26), 4th Phil de Lacy (27), 3rd Dave Blackburn (28), 2nd Steve Hart (30 on CB) and 1st Pete Cunniff, also with 30 points.

Gold Category: 5th Richard McCann (28), 4th Tony Smale (29 on CB), 3rd Norman Cahill (29 on CB), 2nd Steve Higgins (30) and 1st Jim Imrie with 32 points.

Nearest the pins (sponsored by Property Shop): Hole 5 Scotty Phillips, Hole 7 Brian Mulligan, Hole 13 Pete Cunniff, Hole 17 Ramona Baumann.

Abacus (sponsored by Mike Kaylor): Paul Kavanagh

Best Guest: Andreas Luderman (26).

Our thanks go to all Riquelme staff for their contribution to the day.

Next week we will be at Altorreal, then on following weeks at Vistabella and La Torre.

Keep up to date with all SMGS matters by logging on to our website www.smgs.org or simply give Captain Tony Smale a call on 628 227 687.