Day 41 - A Charitable Round

One of the great privileges of being Captain of a Golf Club is to be able, together with the Lady Captain, to choose your charity of choice.  There is an art to this, in choosing something that will resonate with members, whilst at the same time trying to find the right balance between hectoring and cajoling for donations. I hope that Diana and I find the right balance between the latter, but either way I am convinced that we have made a good choice as to the former. Our charity of choice is the Princess Alice Hospice - and, as anyone who has been involved with the charity knows, they do a fantastic job of providing supportive care for those in the community who are reaching the ends of their allotted time. Recently, they have started a programme to provide care in people's house as well as in the hospice itself, something which is to be welcomed and supported.

When I went into the Club office today, I was delighted to see my in-tray overflowing with positive responses from local golf clubs who have reacted so positively to my entreaty to donate free rounds of golf for the Charity. We shall use these to auction off at an appropriate time for the Charity and  I already have my eye on the four-ball donated by Sunningdale....


At least I earned £25 for Prince Alice today, as we had our first Captain & Pro challenge, a competition where members have signed up to play the two of us in foursomes format, paying the aforesaid pony for the privilege.  At the end of the year, the pair who produce the best result will be awarded a bottle of champagne each at the AGM in February 2016.

So far, after our first match, we are 0 for 1... Mike Evans and I played today against Chris Hadfield and Gordon Tomkins, who came out of the blocks like the proverbial bat: before we could get ourselves organised, we were a couple of holes down and spent the rest of the round hanging on to their coat-tails and exploiting the few errors they made. We managed to square things on the 17th hole and, on the last, with both balls some 20 feet from the hole, were going to be reasonably content with the half...until Chris holed his second long birdie putt of the day and that was that!

Golf (and the Charity) were the real winners though as we had a great game, played in excellent spirits, and the result didn't really matter (he says through gritted teeth....!).