Tournament almost success at last

Busselton is in the south west corner of Australia, an area known for surfing and wineries - Margaret River is just down the road. We arrived on Wednesday and as is our custom once we were settled into the site we went to check out the local golf course. The pro told us that the course was closed on the weekend as they had a big mixed tournament, news that of course made us prick up our ears. He laughed when we asked if we could enter, as it 'was filled ages ago'. However, when we did some checking on the internet that evening we found that the posted timesheet had a gap in it - obviously a couple had cancelled. So the next morning we called into the golf club office and they were happy for us to be late entries and fill the gap.

People who have been following this blog would know that we have a very poor record in the tournaments we have played in during this trip, but this being a mixed event, and given we have been playing a bit in the last couple of weeks, we were hopeful that we could do better. We were quite impressed by the format - individual stableford on the Saturday, played in men's and women's groups but then the partners' scores aggregated, and 4bbb on Sunday. The tournament winners were the pair that had the most points for the weekend, plus there were daily prizes. Our optimism was soon proved to be misplaced - John scored a respectable 31 points on Saturday but Wendy had a total wreck of a day and could only scrape together 24 points. (A mitigating factor for this is that Wendy was quite ill and wasn't sure she wouild even be able to play) However we fronted up full of hope on Sunday morning at the crack of dawn (unfortunately the pair we had replaced had obviously requested early tee times - we were off at 7:41) and played the four-ball like champions, coming in with a very good 45 points. John did most of the heavy lifting, we reckon he would have had 43 if he'd been playing on his own, but Wendy also played much better than the day before, we had plenty of holes where we would have both scored 3 points.

After lunch at the club (provided as part of the entry fee both days, as well as dinner on Saturday night) we came back to the van to watch Tiger blitz the field at the Masters, then headed back to the golf club late in the afternoon for the presentations (and the ample supply of afternoon tea nibblies also provided as part of the entry fee). First were the overall winners (with a very impressive 120 points for the 2 days) down to 5th place, then the individual stableford winners from Saturday, down to 3rd place, then the 4bbb winners. 1st and 2nd - 47 points. 3rd - 45 points - but not us, we lost out on a countback. So still no tournament success, but very, very close. Next time will be ours!