Swashbucklers win 2018 Swindle Ryder Cup

A fantastic day’s weather saw the Swashies pip the Pistols, Early Birds and Originals in today’s Ryder Cup Final.

Last year’s campaign saw us start the Finals Day quite far back (which looked dodgy to even make the day  at one point), but despite just winning the actual day, it wasn’t anywhere near enough to get close to the front runners of the eventual winners, Bobs Bashers, and runners-up Pistol Knights.

4balls consisting of a member of each Swindle all headed out under a warming sun, and it was t-shirts out for most of us… tho Tony kept his beanie on all the way round for some reason.  Lovely weather, I for one caught a bit of colour, even if it was slightly pink.  I think all the 4balls had a good game, played in the best spirits.  I was even thinking after the game that the mixed Swindle format should be played more often.

I was out with Originals’ Brian, Pistols’ Will and Early Bird Andre.  We had good round, though not helped by a few errant balls needing a good searching for at the start which slowed us down… and the guys behind. Wasn’t Will’s best day I’m afraid, and Andre was steady but a couple blobs slowed him down.  Speaking of blobs, Brian started with 5 out of the first 6 holes (!), but this was clearly because he was using a new ball.  Turning to some tatty brown duffer ball, his game picked up from the 7th, and from 8pts on the front he came back with 17pts only just missing out on tieing Andre for 2nd spot.  Good luck (or bad luck), saw me sneak a hole in one on the 13th and copped the group win for the Swashies.

Coming in as the 3rd group, we managed to see most of the other 4balls come in.  Al Gollop came 2nd in his group (not sure?) and I think won MVP for our lot thanks to winning all his individual Ryder Cup matches this year.  I did hear that Winkle won his group, as did Ian, Ritchie, Simon G and Beef Austin.  Well done to them but it was all the points across all the groups that we started to tot up the points and ran out eventual winners by 8.5 points from the always-competitive Pistols.  Proper team effort.

Very well done to the Pistol’s young Ben who came in with the day’s best score of 39pts.

Congratulations to all Swindlers across the club who played this year.  I’ve said before that these days really do set our club apart from not just the other Groups’ courses but many more around.

Well done Swashbuckler’s Ryder Cup Captain Wayne

Sidelined recently with a wrist injury, a cracking job by Wayne this year in getting us all organised for the individual matches and of course today’s final. 

On behalf of all of us, a big thank you him for for his hard work and patience – *cough* Winkle. 

At the end of the day, a proper team effort in every match this year bought the Ryder Cup back ‘home’ (?) to the Swashies once again.  5th time I think.

Good luck to Dan ‘those trousers‘ Mason who takes on the challenge of leading the defence of the cup next year.