After last Sunday’s bright sunshine, this weeks grey skies and bitterly cold easterly wind found forty or more hardy golfers competing in the popular Texas Scramble format, writes George Carr.

In this enjoyable version of team golf all team members hit their first shots and the best of these is selected, then each player hits a second shot from that position and so on until the hole is completed; each team member must contribute at least four ‘tee shots’. The handicap allowance is one tenth of the combined handicap of the team.

At the close of play, in first place, with a score of 56.2, we find Stuart Ruffle playing off 19, Steve Channing, off 20, and the immediate past Devon captain, Neil Holland, who is obliged to play off a handicap of minus one (on account of the fact that he is a seriously good golfer.)

However, their golfing prowess notwithstanding, their combined allowance of 3.8 shots proved a serious challenge to their mathematic talents and it took a review by the official scorer to put them into the first place they richly deserved.

In second place, less than a shot adrift on 56.9, Carl Sheehan, Chris(CC) Roberts, and John Barnard (almost certainly the best 13 handicapper in the club). In third place on 57.3, another high/low handicap team in the form of club manager Jonothan Lee (4) Chris Grubb (15) and Martin Crockett (18) were pushing very hard. All in all, some very good golf given the arctic conditions.

It is worth noting that Steve Channing has registered two first place finishes and two third places in the last four weeks and so continues to climb the winter league table. Simon Knowles’s fourth place this week keeps him firmly in first place on 35 points. Moray Bosence, with one point from his fifth place this week, remains in second spot on 28 points.

One compensating factor for the freezing easterly wind over the last week or so is that the golf course is beginning to dry out properly for the first time in many months. Roll on spring!