The September Medal, kindly sponsored by Harrison- Lavers and Potburys, was played last Saturday and in spite of very blustery conditions some excellent scores were returned.

Taking Division 1 with a 68 (nett 61), Kevin Legg continued his winning ways with a very solid round including three 2’s.

Kevin has been working hard on his game of late and as he has now reduced his handicap to 6 he must have further enhanced his chances of representing the Club in the forthcoming Picture Match against East Devon as well as a possible call-up for next year’s Palairet team.

Second in the Division was George West with a 73 (nett 63) with Duncan Taylor with the best gross score of the day taking third place with his 67 (nett 64) and now having to play off a 2 handicap.

In Division 2, Kevin’s regular playing partner, Roy Turner, easily took the top prize with a gross 77 (nett 60), thus immediately reducing his handicap to 15, without the need for the handicap committee to return from their endless summer holiday to take such long awaited action.

Second was John Barnard with a nett 65 just beating Ron Davies also with a nett 65 into third place on a countback.

Division 3 was won by Barry Venn with a nett 65 beating off Stuart Ruffle with a nett 67 into second place and Howard Cushing again in the prizes in third.

In the Allstate Monday Stableford there was a big scramble to see who could get the most shots off their handicap and the winner was Graham Vincent who scored a magnificent 44 points (8 shots better than par no less) and promptly had 2 shots taken from him so that he now plays off 16.

Normally with such a good score, Graham would have been expected win by 3 or 4 shots, but as the competition was so fierce, he only managed to win on a countback on the last 6 holes, from none other than Luke Sheppard.

For once, ‘No Birdies’ Luke had a round to remember and had a remarkable 5 birdies in his excellent score which reduced his handicap to 7.

Third, just one point back at 43 points, was Neil Faulkner who shook off his poor medal round on Saturday to come in with a score 7 shots better than par, some 13 shots better than his poor effort on Saturday.

Obviously his long lie-in on Sunday morning, when he didn’t have to get up at 5 am to bake bread for us all, did wonders for his golf not to mention his well-being.

Mark Thomas obviously plays much better golf in North Devon than elsewhere and certainly much better than at Sidmouth.

Last Wednesday at Holsworthy he won his first prize in a competition for senior players, with his partner ‘Chuckle Brother’ Neil Faulkner and at the weekend scored a hole-in-one at the 4th hole at Ilfracombe.

His ‘Ace’ helped his low round of a 1 over par 70, which enabled him to win the Scott Cup for the best morning round.

However, at his age stamina is not his strong point and he faded in the afternoon of the main event which was the 36 hole Ferguson Cup, mainly due to him losing 6 shots in the final few holes.

Mark’s newly-found senior status is clearly suiting him very well, but he will need to get in some early nights from now on to enable him to compete in a future 36 hole event!