On a beautiful day for golf with sunny skies and little wind 30 players took part in the latest Friday Stableford at Sidmouth Golf Club hoping get into the top 10 which score points so that they can advance up the league table, writes John Rockey.

The player at the top of the league at the end of the competition on October 28 will win the Friday Night trophy, first competed for in 1967.

Steve Crabb, who plays off a nine handicap, is always near the prizes and managed to take the spoils this time with a good 39 points. Whilst the course is undergoing its annual maintenance week with extensive work being undertaken on the greens, scoring can be a little more difficult, but Crabb brushed this slight problem aside, rather like the top dressing being applied to the greens.

Second was Bob Skelly who used his 28 shots well to garner 37 points which just edged out Mark Williams into third place on a countback having scored his 37 points off an 11 handicap.

In the league table, none of the leading three players scored well and those in the running for the top spot didn’t add to their league totals. John Jones still leads the field with 74 points followed by Chris Roberts on 70 closely followed by George Barber on 68 points, with all to play for in the next few weeks.

In contrasting conditions from the Stableford competition on Friday at Sidmouth Golf Club, the weather for the Charles Stanley Monday Stableford was pretty miserable with showers most of the day, writes John Rockey.

However, this did not stop over 60 players taking part with one of the early starters coming in with a good score which the later players could not match. Les Pratt, a new name on the winners’ board of late, recorded a very sound 40 points to win both the main competition as well as the seniors’ section and leave the usual contenders for the honours to fight out the minor places.

In a blanket finish for those places, John Jones with his 39 points and superior back nine claimed second place just ahead of George Barber with the same points score. There were of course some hard luck stories, particularly from Mark Thomas, whose putting is one of mainstays of his game, but on the last hole his normally sound stroke suddenly left him and he three putted the final green to blast himself off the podium.

Thirty players took part in the pro’s Stableford, on Saturday at Sidmouth Golf Club, arranged by the club professional Ben Thorne, writes John Rockey.

Scoring proved difficult for all in this recently introduced competition, with Stuart Ruffle, pictured, winning with 37 pts, in spite of a couple of ‘blobs’ on his outward nine, but a nice birdie two on the way home put things right.

Just losing out on a countback with the same score was Hugh Dorliac who must be regretting his ‘no score’ on the 15th hole when going well.

In third place was Neil Faulkner, who in spite of a very poor start, recovered well to come in with 36 pts.