We want to feature all your results

May 8 2008 by Tim Taylor, The Journal

THE Teeing Off team were briefly a little teed off themselves at a recent annual meeting, when it was announced The Journal had mistakenly stated a few years ago we no longer wanted to carry results of club golf competitions.

To be fair, the likeable administrator saying this was also kind enough to point out we had details of The Journal’s 2008 Golf Service available at the meeting. Nevertheless, we need to put the record straight. There is no U-turn involved.

“What was said has never been the case in my time here,” said The Journal sports editor, Kevin Dinsdale, who has been doing the job for 10 years.

“We want to see as many club golf results in the paper as possible. If golf officials at any club in our circulation area are good enough to give up their own time to send them in, we are pleased to put them in the paper. On the thankfully rare occasion that a golf result goes missing, I always want to know why that has happened.”

Any club secretary – or captain of any men’s or ladies’ or junior or senior section – who would like the details of The Journal’s 2008 Golf Service can get them, using the contact details given at the top of this column.

We have boiled down the information in the letter about sending in results to seven brief – but hopefully pertinent – paragraphs.

On the subject of Journal golf results, we were curious about the handicap system used for the Thompson Shield at Blyth.

This is a competition for the captains and vice-captains of the 16 teams in the Newcastle and District League and was won by George Mulvey and Alan Morris from Whitley Bay. They had a joint handicap of 15.2 under “The Silloth Terms.”

League secretary Ray Whiteman explained this succinctly by giving us the example of a 10-handicap golfer paired with a five-handicapper.

“You subtract the lowest handicap from the highest,” he said. “Then you subtract that from 30. You divide that by five. Then you subtract that from the lowest handicap.

“In the instance of a five-handicapper and a 10-handicapper, that will would put them playing off scratch.”

Yes, we have checked. It does add up!

WATCH out for a brief letter about Journal golf results and stories we are posting this week to the secretaries of every golf club in The Journal circulation area, enclosing copies for the captains of your men’s, ladies’ , junior and senior sections.