Saturday 8th October 2016
The first section of 20 players fought it out today in the Men’s Handicap Singles in cold blustery conditions. The day produced 11 qualifiers and tomorrow the remaining field will attempt to qualify. It was pleasing from the handicappers point of view that 5 out of the 11 who made it through to post section had handicaps of 10 and over. Players that impressed today was Joe Wnek and the ever greens Ken Hayward and Neville Turnbull. Ken Hayward (3 handicap) won his first two games with scores of 21-7 and 21-8 but even if I had him on zero the extra 3 points to the opposition wouldn’t of made any difference to the closeness of these two results said Shoota Ballinger the handicapper. He was just too good on the day. However he was pushed a lot harder in his last game 21-18 by Omeka Feaunati who also was on a 3 handicap.
Tomorrow will have on show some of the best players in the club and with handicaps ranging from 0 to 15 anyone can win. If everyone plays well the games should result in many cliff hangers such as we saw today said Ballinger. We had 12 games out of the 27 (nearly 50%) ending within 4 points.
Many thanks must go to our Match Committee members who controlled todays event. A big thank you to Audrey Sciascia, Barbara Selley and Lodia Wnek for an extremely well run event. They got three completed rounds of 20 players on one green, a brilliant result.