Golf Festival 2016
The first day of the SGWT Golf Festival was played over Moray Old Course in glorious sunshine, following a wee shower as the first group got ready to tee off. A little bonus was the very much reduced flying from RAF Lossiemouth as the base is on a night flying programme for the month of September and so things were very quiet until about 2 o'clock. The male competitors were all outshone a little by Liz Robinson's 41 points and Dee Crane's 40pts. They all now had a target to shoot at for the following 4 days, of hopefully, just as good, if not better weather over Forres, Elgin, Grantown and Boat of Garten.
Day 2 at Forres was again played in fine conditions with Fiona Findlay coming out on top of the leaderboard with a fine 43 points followed in second place by
Peter Roe with 39 and Stephen Leitch on 37.At the end of play there was a chance to get all of the previous winners of Scotland's Golf Whisky Trail Golf Festival together. Ian Kerr, winner in both 2013 and 2014, Ashley Leitch our first lady winner in 2015 and Ian Smiththe 2016 winner. Both Ian's play at Peterborough Milton Golf Club whilst Ashley plays her golf at Dollar Golf Club.4
Day 3 at Elgin saw Diane Moncrieff score a great 42 points to shoot her up the leaderboard to second place whilst Janette Roe scored 40 points to take her in to the lead with 40 points whilst her husband Peter lay in 3rd position after scoring 36points, It was very tight at the top of the leaderboard with Janette on 113, with Diane on 111 and Peter on 110.
Well it was certainly a dreich start to play at Grantown with the rain coming down in buckets leading to initial flooding on fairways and, not surprisingly a couple of guys did not venture forth and a few succumbed after a few holes. The ladies, however, put them to shame by sticking it out until the better weather came along after about 3 hours from the start time and by the close of play the sun was shining brightly. Helmut Pertler, Moray, had the best score of the day with 39 points followed by Tom Edwards (Peterborough Milton, John Rankin (Forfar) and Janette and Peter Roe (Workington) all on 37 points with Tom being second gent on better inward half. Ashley Leitch (Dollar) was lady runner up with 33 points.
The final day of the SGWT Golf Festival 2016 took place at Boat of Garten Golf Club on a warm but windy September day. The forecasted rain held off until the final group appraoched the clubhouse which was a blessing, after the previous day's monsoon at Grantown-on-Spey GC.
However, the wind did get up and, even though it was weighted down, the Klub Klean gazebo took off for the tennis courts and some of the golfers found the breeze to be "testing".
In the end the very worthy winner was Janette Roe (Workington GC) with 150 points as her best 4 out of 5 Stableford scores showing remarkable consistency throughout the week scoring 37, 36, 40, 37 and 33 points over the 5 days on 5 courses she had never played before. Janette is shown below having been presented with the SGWT Quaich by Gordon Hay manager of Boat of Garten Golf Club.
Spud the piper played a couple of tunes prior to the presentation of prizes and a short extract can be seen by following the link below:-