Tonsley Golf Society – Winter Tour 2012

The weekend of the 4/5th February saw the 2012 Tonsley Golf Society visit the Wiltshire Hotel and Country Club. To the hardy it was a brisk morning, to others it was truly polar with temperatures that morning reading -10 degrees!

It had been two years since the last Tonsley Cup and we had somehow picked the coldest day since. As some of the country's most average golfers gathered, the atmosphere became increasingly edgy and nervous. It wasn't the anticipation of championship golf that was having the effect, more the prospect of battling hypothermia.

In some cases the low temperatures were to prove advantageous. One unnamed golfer managed to mis-hit his drive off the first, landing - or rather bouncing - his ball on the frozen lake to land on the fairway. As the opening day of the competition drew to a close, the snow was so heavy that white balls were replaced with pink, and even then they became white again as they rolled across the greens, becoming snowballs!

Unusually for the Tonsley Cup, most people had become less interested in their score and more interested in getting in the warm to watch the rugby and enjoy a few beers. In fact, the weather got so bad that the club closed the course on the Sunday, so the Tonsley Cup was declared a tie.

And Paul Flood was announced the winner of 'The Get in the Hole Challenge' after a fantastic round - but under the hats and gloves few people noticed that!

RB

Here's the detail and prizes (whatever, show me the photos)...

The Tonsley Cup 2012

The Tonsley Cup is a matchplay competition which loosely follows a Ryder Cup format. On Saturday we played ‘singles’ where there were two matches in each fourball. Handicaps were taken into account.

On Sunday we could have played ‘fourballs’, where each hole was won by the team whose individual golfer had the lowest score. Alas, not, with the day snowed-off.

All players were designated a team: Floody and Woolfy’s guests playing in the Angels team (captained by Floody) and Rob and Joe’s guests playing in the Devils team (captained by Rob).

With Sunday never played out because of the conditions, a tie was called between the Angels and Devils.