Hough’s It
The Club Championships 2019 Ryan Nestadt won the 2019 Men’s Club Championship for the 2nd time, this time after an 8 year break having given up the game for a few years, but then coming back older and wiser, and certainly stronger.
His ball-striking was unbelievably impressive the entire weekend, with a final approach to the tight flag on the home hole the icing on the cake, where he managed to get the ball close, very close, and in between the hole and the water, in its traditional last-round position.  | | Ryan Nestadt with the Club Champion’s Trophy | | |  | | |  | Ryan finished on 1-under 143,
3 shots ahead of Gary Bernstein and Liam Clinton |
It was obviously a weekend for Ryans, with Ryan Bytenski taking gross honours in the B Division on 162 by 1 stroke from Rasheed Amod.
 | | Ryan Bytenski with outgoing Prez Adrian Diamond |
Daniel Egdes scooped the nett in the A Div, including a final round 69 with a back nine of 31, and the B Div nett went to Fikile Mhlonto.
And C Div winner from the previous weekend, Fred Sebogoane, was there to receive his trophy and golf bag from Adrian.  | | Fred Sebogoane C Div winner |
• The next big club tournament is already up next Saturday the 16th of March, with the 1st leg of The Race to Simola, The PLAYERS. It will be Individual Stableford and will be a 7:15am shotgun start. Due to the full Saturday morning fields and most of the regular Saturday afternoon golfers being catered for, the shotgun morning field will be only for those members with normal Saturday booking and playing rights. There will be prize-giving and a braai on the verandah after golf.
• Then on Sunday the 31st March, morning field also, the Houghton Family Trophy will take place. It will be Better Ball Stableford, and is open to any and all family combinations. A light lunch will be served after golf.
The Rules
Here are a few interesting queries that came up during Club Champs:
1. It sometimes pays to walk ahead and check for a ball that just might have finished over the water, especially if you’ve hit it from way back. Once you go to the drop zone, take relief and hit another ball, that ball is now the ball in play, so if you then find that your original is outside the penalty area, then it’s too late.
2. Similarly, a ball embedded within a penalty area does not allow for embedded ball relief. It’s in the penalty area, so you have to proceed accordingly under Rule 17.1d for penalty areas. The embedded ball Rule does not apply in penalty areas.
3. A ball lying in bounds, but close to the fence, and where the fence is in the way of your backswing, does not entitle you to free relief. Your options if you can’t play it are (a) 2 club-lengths lateral relief from where the ball lies; (b) back on the line relief – not normally an option in the above situation - or (c) stroke and distance ie back to where you last played from.
4. A tee is a closely-mown area, so you can take preferred lies if you find your ball lying on another teeing ground.
5. On a not so good note, I heard about searches for balls lasting more than 3 minutes, plus drops from shoulder height!!
Tour Rules
A few PGA Tour Pros let rip at the USGA/R&A on social media last week about the recent changes, including Major winner and World #4 Justin Thomas. The USGA’s PR department promptly fired back at him as below, and they then must have chatted off-line as they kind of kissed and made up, but all with the best interests of the game at heart.
I still don’t get what the Tour Pros' problems are with the new Rules.
Everything is almost self-explanatory, and the Tour Pros, whose business it is by the way, had more than enough notice - before the changes kicked in – to study them, to learn them and understand them, and then to query them.
The caddies may not stand behind you and line you up anymore, so line yourself up and get on with it.
Oh, and by the way, drop it from knee-height, and don’t use the old green-reading books!!
Shop Stuff
1. Ladies, we have quite a large range of Swagg clothing available in store.
2. Callaway Epic Flash drivers and fairways. I have demo units that you can take to the range to try out.
3. We also have demo irons of all of Callaway’s new Apex and Apex Pro irons and hybrids.
4. And then in Callaway shoes, we have the top of the range Apex Pro S shoe…
As well as the Delmar Retro…
5. And lastly, also from the Callaway stable, are the Odyssey Stroke Lab putters.
Multi-material (graphite and steel) Stroke Lab shafts are one of the key features of this new range of putters, which is 40 grams lighter, and which allows them to move more weight to the head to give you more feel and more consistency in the roll of your putts. These putters come out in all the usual Odyssey head shapes, but new is The Tuttle, a round mallet-shaped head.
That’s about all for this week.
Hope you have a good one.
Kappy.
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