As chilly autumn draws in, it is difficult to remember the lovely hot weather of just last week, writes Hugh Dorliac.

However, in the warm, sometimes baking conditions when the fairways were browning off and the greens were slick, lots of good competitive golf was played at Sidmouth beginning with the senior Ball in Bag competition.

Roy Smith, Phil Spencer and Charles Oram took the honours with a solid team score of 82. On Friday, the leaderboard for the Sidmouth Jewellers Stableford saw Russell Bess winning on countback from Arron Taylor and Jonathan Lee, all having scored 39 points.

On Saturday the Streatham Trophy final, very kindly sponsored by A R Sports Therapy, was played, in which aggregate scores from previous rounds are added to the score in the final to determine the overall trophy winners. As there had only been one round able to be played, way back in November, before the wet weather and covid intervened, it was going to be a tight affair.

On the day Phil Spencer and Mike Davis scored an excellent 43 to add to their first round 41 to beat the round one winners by one point, thus taking the trophy.

Lester Wilmington and John Barnard had had an exceptional first round score of 45, only to not quite put it together on the day, scoring just 38 points giving them an overall score of 83.

Second in the day’s prizes were Saju Patidar and Anthony Griffiths on 42 and Mark Bathard with Adrian Baldwin came third with 41.

The Seniors’ Autumn Cup competition on Monday produced a very solid winning score of 86 stableford points for the team of Nigel Sharp, David Bromage and Steve Kerrigan. Coming in second with 83 points were Lester Wilmington, Bob Cook and Bob Reynolds. Third team was Mark Laird, John Cowan and Chris Holland.on 81.

In the Upper Crust Bakery Stableford on Monday Arron Taylor featured again with a winning 42 points, with Kym White 40 and Adrian Baldwin 37 picking up the minor places.

Arron is now down to a very respectable handicap of 10.1, having lost two shots in the past eight days with his consistent showings in the competitions. Single figures by next week?