Congratulations to Finlay Cummings on a great perfor-mance in the UK Kids Golf national finals held at Brampton Heath Golf Club on the 12 September 2015. Finlay shot two bird-ies, dropped some shots in difficult circumstances but managed to keep it together coming down the final holes to secure the runners-up spot in the 12-13 age group.

As runner-up Finlay has been invited to compete in the 2016 European Kids Golf European final to be held in Gullane, Scotland, next May.

UK Kids Golf was estab-l i s h e d w i t h t h e sole purpose of working to get boys and girls playing and enjoying golf by provid-ing:

An opportunity for boys and girls under the age of 14 to play golf in a fun, competitive environment on good quality courses

Motivation for kids to try golf

Advice for parents and guardians on how to sup-port young golfers

Generate funding for organisations that share UK Kids Golf objectives including the Golf Foun-dation and County Golf Partnerships

Congratulations to all those

that took part in the Junior

Club Championships that

took place during the summer

holiday period.

The Junior Club Champion

for 2015 and the winner of

the McCormick Cup, is Tom

Mead who recorded a Gross

score of 151 over 36 holes.

Ed Chapman had the best

Nett score for players over

16 years, recording a Nett

141 over 36 holes and will

receive the Bob Roberts Cup.

The Tipton Trophy for the

best Under 16 years Nett

score of 146, again over 36

holes, was George

Garnham.

The Rostron Cup for the best

Nett score of 154 over 36

holes was Jack Manley.

Spotlight on our younger members

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 5

SEPTEMBER 2015

On Target

The Monthly Newsletter of Bedford & County Golf

Club

Points of Interest

Finlay has been invited to compete in the 2016 European Kids

Golf European final

Beth Healey became the first player from the Shires Tour to shoot a course record

Tom Mead completes

the triple of Club Champion, Junior Club Champion and County

Colts Champion

Inside this issue:

Sue & Cara 2

Caroline Matthews &

Sharon Stevens 2

Rakesh Shah Memorial 2

Volunteers 3

Course Maintenance 3

Lady Captain 4

Alan Stevens 4

Club Captain 5

Shires Junior Golf Tour his-tory was made on Sunday 13 September as Beth Hea-ley became the first player

from the tour to shoot a course record as she fired a two-under-par 70 at Pav-enham Park. Now playing off 5 Beth was in sensational form as she bagged 43 points to win the Gold Division by six.

The Shires Junior Golf Tour offer a structured pro-gramme of nine-hole and 18-hole competitions, usual-ly on Sundays, throughout the Spring, Summer and early Autumn. The 12 events take place at a selection of quality golf

courses across the English counties of Leicestershire & Rutland, Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire. There is also a Grand Final at the end of the season which, this year will be held at Bedford & County on 26 October 2015.

Junior Club

Championships

Jackie’s decision to leave the club provided us with the opportunity of making changes in the office operation and the first step has been the recruiting of Cara and Sue (pictured left and right respec-tively).

Sue is an expert in Sage accounting whilst Cara has experience in sales administration and mem-bership (at LA Fitness).

Please provide a warm welcome to them both. Good luck ladies, thanks for coming on board, and all the best for the future.

Welcome to Sue and Cara

Page 2 ON TARGET

Congratulations to Caroline Matthews and

Sharon Stevens on reaching the final of the

County Knockout Foursomes where they will

meet Cally Hawker and Sue Wade from

Chalgrave Manor Golf Club

The Final will be played at South Beds Golf

Club at 10.00 on Wednesday 14 October.

WELL DONE AND GOOD LUCK.

Success on the grander stage?

Many members will have

known Rakesh who, sadly

passed away a little time

ago. Rakesh was not a

member of the club for a

great deal of time but, in

the time he was here, he

made many friends and

loved being a member.

On Saturday, 19 Septem-

ber his family held the

first of what is intended to

be an annual memorial

tournament with teams

taking part from within the

club and from amongst his

family and friends.

We were blessed with splen-

did weather and after the

golf all participants were

joined by a large number of

his friends and relatives.

Rakesh’s brother, Omah, spoke

warmly and movingly about

Rakesh and his young family

and those present listened to a

representative of the Anthony

Nolan charity talk of its work

in saving the lives of those with

blood cancer and blood disor-

ders.

Prizes were awarded to the

best returns from both mem-

bers and visitors:

Members

1 s t P h i l W o o d s

2 n d D e a n E r d m a n

3rd Owen Jones

Visitors

1 s t O m a h S h a h

2nd Geoff Fenn

This was an event that raised

a substantial amount for the

Anthony Nolan charity and it

is anticipated that it will

grow year on year.

Rakesh Shah Memorial Tournament

Stop Press:

Members will know that Steve Vinnicombe has been offered and has accepted the post of Club Manager when John Olds leaves.

In the next edition, we will be asking Steve to outline some of his plans and aspirations for the club in the fu-ture

Without volunteers every sports club in the land would be considerably worse off and, has been demonstrated over the past few years, Bedford and County is no different.

But, as Director of Greens Terry Farmer writes, we still need your help and support:

“Over the last 2/3 years our volunteer group has done some excellent work on the golf course. Our budget is still challenging and the work this group of members does, really helps us to present the course at its best. The end result is that we all benefit from a better course and happy visitors who return and spread the word.

To try and get more people involved your Greens Com-mittee has agreed that we should restructure the volun-teer group and split it into four sections, headed up by one person for each function.

These are:

Projects: Barry Holmes

This group to concentrate on the hard areas of the course such as tee markers, ball washers, seat positioning, painting, steps etc.

Tree canopies: Niall Perry

This is an important element, as maintaining the height of the canopy allows the green staffs to cut beneath the trees, which not only improves the presentation it avoids your ball being buried in long grass.

Tree bases: Clive Allen

This is all about presentation, we could kill off the grass around the trees but doing that is unsightly and encour-ages rabbits and other ani-mals to dig up the area. So trimming is the answer.

Gardens: Rita Farmer

We have recently employed a part time gardener who is responsible for maintaining the gardens and the hard areas around the clubhouse, However it still needs that little extra to provide the finish.

There are no set times or days to carry out the work; it is just when you have a spare hour or two. The work is not hard labour – it’s just about having some willing pairs of hands (and feet)

If you feel that you can help, especially over the next 2/3 months please drop me an email at:

terry.rita@btinternet.com

and I will add your name to the list.”

The following pictures were taken by Head Greenkeep-er, Adam Butler following recent major maintenance on the course.

The Greens were double verticut to a depth of 7 mm; this was followed by a heavy top dressing of around 18 tonnes. Following that a solid tine to a depth of 6 inches using 20 mm tines and, finally, sand was brushed into the holes to aid with drainage and help keep disease at bay. These are just the basic benefits of carrying this practice out.

The second picture is taken behind our super 600 scari-fying machine. All fairways have now been done and somewhere in the region of 80 tonnes of organic matter has been collected from the fairways.

Volunteers

Page 3 ON TARGET

Major Course Maintenance

Tom Honey

Tom Honey , a former junior member, has spent the past 10 months as a valuable member of the green-keeping team. He has now taken up a perma-nent post with National Rail and we all offer him our best wishes for the future.

Page 4 ON TARGET

Lady Captain’s Report Glynis Winrow

The Ladies Invitation Day held on 30 July was a great success. Serial win-ner, Sharon Stevens, along with Sally Courtney (Surbiton Golf Club) topped the leaderboard with 40 points. Runners-up were Heather Nolan and Sue Borthwick (Market Rasen) on 37 points with Glynis Winrow and Olga Ebsworth (Belton Park) third, also on 37 points.

The Senior Ladies Spring Trophy was played on 3 August (editor: don’t ask me why a Spring trophy is played in August). Anne Coates triumphed on 37pts with Rachel Rushton runner-up on 34 pts. Winner of the over 70’s prize was Jean Ward (32 pts) with Anne Allcroft runner-up on 27 points

On 4 August we hosted the East Regional Round of the England Golf Australian Spoons Competition. With very windy conditions and superfast greens awaiting 114 ladies from across the Easten Region we waited sometime for a score above 30 points but the eventual winners, Susan

Filby and Frances Johnson from Ryston Park in Nor-folk managed to score 36 and have gone through to the final at Frilford Heath.

The Captains’ Joint Charity Day also took place in August when 17 teams took part raising funds for our Charities: Prostate Cancer and the Beds Gar-den Carers for people with disabilities.

The winners were Pauline Hulance, Peter Hulance, Sarah Brookes and Nick Brookes with 92 points. Runner-up was the Cap-tain’s team of Colin McFar-land, Ray Tracey, Ed Chapman and Will McFar-land with 86 points. 3rd were Ross Kilroy, Neil Youngman, Nathen Dennis and Grant Elsey with 85 points. Afterwards at the auction we managed to raise around £6,000 for our charities.

On 25 August we played the Hospital Cup at home against the Bedfordshire Golf Club and we man-aged to retain the trophy for another year and raised £104 pounds for

Bedford Hospital.

Before I finish I would like to wish Good Luck to our girls who have got through to the final of the County Knockout Foursomes - Car-oline Mathews and Sharon Stevens. Well done girls.

Alan Peter Stevens, but al-ways known as Peter, was a member of the club in the 1950s to mid 1960s and enjoyed both the social life and the golf. He won the Beds and County Challenge Cup in 1960.

Peter was born in 1927 in Haynes, Bedfordshire and moved to East Sussex in the late 1960s. He continued to play golf, a lifetime pas-sion of his, and in 2001 on moving to Mundesley, Nor-folk he joined the Mundesley Golf Club and was an active member there until last year.

Peter Stevens died on the 18th August 2015 in Nor-

Alan Peter Stevens

folk, aged 88 years.

His daughter, Helen Lisle-Wood, recently visited the club and provided us with some reminiscences of her younger days:

‘I can remember going to the old Club House and recall it being made of wood and I think painted green but still comfortable inside. My sister and I used to sit on chairs there and have a glass of lemonade with a cherry on a cocktail stick and a bag of Smith's crisps with the blue packet of salt to add!

My father had a set of golf clubs cut down for me, three

irons, a wooden driver and a putter which were done by a chap there who ran the re-pair shop that existed on-site. I still have them.

We can recall going out onto the course with him and being able to collect water-cress from a stream and playing in the bunkers!’

A chair from the old club-

house

“.. we managed to

raise around £6,000

for our charities.”

Page 5 ON TARGET

Club Captain’s Report Colin McFarland

Since the last report in July 2015 the diary has been busy with Club matches and club events culminating in the Club Championship on the 5th and 6th September.

Club events included:

Captain’s Gun Run on 2 August – winners Grant Elsey and Steve God-dard

Gleneagles Foursomes – winners Ben Jones and your very own Captain

Club Championship – see item later in this report

Royle Trophy – winners Mac Roome and Ian Prior

My congratulations go to all these winners for their achievements.

On Monday 17th Au-gu s t you r ve ry own Club Profession-al, Steve Vinnicombe and I played in the regional finals of the national PGA Pro-Captain better ball challenge. Our region-al final took place at John O Gaunt Golf Club. Through tough c ond i t i o n s S te ve played some excellent golf and we finished on –5 under par which left us lying 4th out of 52 pairs. Thank you Steve for all your sup-port and encourage-ment.

The Joint Captains’ Charity Golf Day on Saturday 22 August (further details in Lady Captain’s report) once

more proved a great success. This was main-ly due to the generosi-ty of sponsors and those who supported the event by entering a team, the fine weather on the day and the superb presentation of the golf course.

The Lady Captain, Glynis Winrow and I were overwhelmed with the generosity of those who supported this event.

Whilst there are too many sponsors to men-tion, special thanks go to Ray Tracey for providing all the food on the day. The success of the event was also largely due to several weeks of hard work on the part of a number of Club members. These included Clive Allen, Jan Churchill, Margaret Watchorn, Avril Horricks, Barry Taylor and Geoff Win-row.

Club Championship

The annual Club Cham-pionship was held on the weekend of 5/6 September to deter-mine the Club Champi-on and the Nett Cham-pion for 2015.

This is one of the most prestigious events in the Club’s Calendar. It proved to be another great competition and after the first day Tom Mead was leading the competition by some 4 shots. Although this appeared to be a healthy lead, I under-stand that by the 14th hole on the final day Tom was no longer

leading and there were 2/3 other players in close contention. How-ever Tom managed to hold his nerve and be-came Club Champion with a gross score over two rounds totalling 148.

The event also provided the Club with its Nett Champion for 2015 and congratulations go to Paul Joy for an ex-cellent net score of 142 over two rounds

All participants in the Club Championship ex-pressed their praise for the superb condition of the course over that weekend. The presenta-tion of the fairways, bunkers and greens were as good as I have ever seen them. The greens were immacu-late and slick with some really interesting pin positions on both days. The Club owes its thanks to Course Man-ager Adam Butler and the greens staff for their work.

President & Vice Presi-dent Trophy

The supper was a lively affair and was fol-lowed by the annual match on 20 Septem-ber. The winners on the day were Steve Walsh and Eamonn Sheridan with 43 points on count-back from Colin Mat-thews and Steve God-dard. The President’s side triumphed on the day so congratulations got to Club President Paul Young who re-ceived the trophy on the team’s behalf.

Club Events

The following Club events

are coming up shortly and

I would encourage all con-

cerned to look at the de-

tails on Club notice boards

and to support them:

Sports Quiz hosted by

Mike Grafton– 9 Octo-

ber – 7.30 pm start

Rabbits and Tigers

Match – 18 October

2015 (supper on 16

October)

Rose and Thistle Match

– 24 October 2015

CAPRO Matches

Club Professional Steve Vinnicombe and your Cap-tain have played a number of CAPRO matches since July and the list of winners proceeding to the final to contest the coveted CAPRO Trophy has grown consider-ably. The following pairs have won through to the final so well done to all of you (grrrrrrr!!!):

Martin Avenia/Carmine Lepore

Chris Tipton/Martin Mad-dox

John Jarvis/Tom Scully