Results of CITCO Grand Prix round 5 – Preisch – 18 June 2014

Wednesday night saw the 5th round of the CITCO Grand Prix being played on the France course at Preisch.

The most impressive performance on the night goes to our starter, Tony Whiteman, who put on a smorgasbord of delights for the 21 players on the night. Cheeses, olives, fine New Zealand wine, and a selection of different shaped beers were all on offer. Chapeau to you Sir!

Consistency is the word of the day to describe the rest of the evenings activities.
Consistency; Noun; plural consistencies
1. Reliability or uniformity; the quality of being consistent. ?
2. The degree of viscosity of something.
3. The characteristic a Golfer strives to apply to his game, in order to attain top spot in the CITCO Grand Prix.

Consistency was evident, with nearly everyone scored a uniform 16 points… Well Mark Houston, Duncan Tippin & Dave Winters all did at least. Duncan lost out to Mark for third place on count-back, but he managed to wrestle it back as Mark was unable to attend the prize giving & receive his spoils. Maybe he was stuck on the border crossing, surrounded by baguette wielding strikers!
Dave Winters, taking over presentation duties from Alan Botfield (who appears to have accidentally landed a job that requires he actually does some work), awarded himself with a well earned second place.
Johnny Sutherland also displayed the characteristic of being consistent, with a stellar 19 points to taking the top spot on the podium. Hmmm… I think I might need to rethink the word of the day!
The football World Cup joined in on the consistency theme, with Spain bringing the same standard of play that saw the current title holders put themselves out of contention before the competition is half over. Are there any parallels to be drawn to last year’s CITCO Grand Prix winner’s standings as we hit the midway mark in the race to Ducal 2014? #whatsupStefAyache?

Arnaud Bouteiller could have maintained a consistent form & won the best guest prize, but was ruled out of contention as he miss-timed his acceptance of the offer to join the FROGS society as a full member. Welcome Arnaud, and there is absolutely no pressure on you to bring in that extra half point needed for FROGS to win the Ryder Cup this year. Absolutely no pressure, at all, so don’t stress.

Jess Have had the best shot on the nominated short hole to bag him 6 FROG-logoed balls (yes, they have arrived), and Ian Doherty just inched past Daniel Kaisers drive on the nominated long hole to take the other 6.

There was much squabbling over the Pink Ball last night with Colin Fraser, Mark Philips, Fréd Sudret & Frank Maitry all bring home 7pts. It was squeaky bum time when the reverse count-back was called – scratch, scratch, a scratch, another scratch, a shared 2pts, before Mark Philips showed that you don’t need to practice 5 times a week to be consistent & took the pink spoils for a second week running.

Standard scratch was 14 points.

Top 5 in the overall standings are Johan Terblanche (59) Gerry Mullen (59), Craig Ferreira (64), Duncan Tippin (72), and Mr Consistency himself, Jonny Hill, with 5×15=75pts*.
*Note – Jonny, your score is actually 76, but that doesn’t divide by 5, so I have changed it for the sake of fitting my word of the day theme.

Duncan’s claim of this being the same score which he hit to win the race to Ducal was dismissed by the crowd as having the consistency of organic matter omitted by a male bovine animal. Checking the archives, he speaks the truth, sharing the honors with Craig back in ’06.

Thanks to our sponsors, CITCO.

SHRM Matchplay
There were plenty of SHRM Matchplay matches held this week (not all on the night)

Duncan Tippin bt Dave Winters 4&2
Johan Terblanche bt Luc De Vet 1up
Tony Whiteman accepted a w/o from Neil Underwood
Jess Have bt Stef Ayache 2&1
Ian Doherty bt Mark Philips 4&2
Ayzo Van Eysinga bt Tony Nightingale 4&2
Craig Ferreira bt Daniel Kaiser, requiring 1 extra hole to do so.

June 25th is the deadline for the remaining round 2 matches, please.

Thanks to our sponsors, SHRM.

General news & house-keeping:
• Frogs are sponsoring the Leary at the annual KCIT golf day on June 28th.
• Jonny Hill will be carefully studying your form for Ryder Cup selection. The competition will be played on Aug 2nd. If you are available for selection, please let Jonny know. @Johnny Sutherland – he will be applying the ‘number of pink balls versus event wins’ algorithm before making his decision.
• For all who have not performed starter duties this or last season, there is only one last opportunity to support your society. We need a starter for the Frank Maitry sponsored Pairs event on Wed July 9th. apaton@pt.lu will gladly receive your offer to initiate play on the day.
• If you have not already got a partner for the Pairs competition, buddy up – it is only a few weeks away.
• If you have not received your FROGS 2014 shirt, please see Johan at the next event.
• Patch Lowe will be in touch to collect your preferred starting times for the next event in Junglinster on the 25th.
• Full results, standings, etc… will be on the www.FROGS.lu website shortly.