Amazing statistics from club

As the temporary closure of Riffa Golf Club draws closer, the club’s management team has put together some incredible statistics to be kept on file for future reference.

As reported recently in GulfWeekly, a grand total of 75 hole in ones have been scored on the course as well as an amazing four albatrosses (two shots on a par five).
The course record for an amateur player stands at an excellent nine under par 63, held by Bahrain national team player Hamad Mubarak, while four golfers from the European Seniors Tour jointly hold the tournament professionals’ course record of 66 – José Rivero, Sam Torrance, Gordon Brand and Giuseppe Cali.
Other outstanding scores achieved during competitive play include Isa Al Borshaid’s score of 53 points in the annual Bahrain Duty Free Desert Challenge and Linda Boland’s achievement of a massive 29 points over nine holes of play.
Embarrassingly, one of the worst scores on record is that of Murray Brown who scored just one point in a “Real Blokes” championship.
The golf professional with the highest number of strokes on a single hole was the club’s general manager, Michael Braidwood, who needed 15 shots to hole his ball in a friendly match several years ago!
“Putting together our statistics has been a very interesting challenge,” said Mr Braidwood. “We initially presented them on a large billboard at our members’ gala dinner in early June which marked the closure of the first nine holes of the existing course.
“Some of the statistics are truly incredible such as the calculation that our course maintenance team has cut a total of 9.7 tons of grass clippings since we opened in 1999 or the fact that two of our favourite members, Mr and Mrs Nayer, have played 1,472 rounds of golf since joining the club in 2001.
“Jeff Muir must be counted as the golfer with the greatest stamina after playing 72 holes of golf, that’s four rounds of 18 holes each, in a single day.
“After studying figures from our handicap software, we were able to calculate that 17-year-old Daniel Owen is the most improved player in our junior section, having seen his handicap fall from 30 to 5.4 in just a few years,” continued Phil Jones, Riffa Golf Club’s director of golf.
“Sultan Abdulla from the national team has improved his handicap by 85 per cent while Jeong Hae Kwak showed the biggest improvement in the ladies section, having reduced her handicap from 37 to just 17.8, a reduction of 52 per cent. From studying the stroke averages on each hole, we can tell that the 10th hole is the hardest on the course and the 5th hole the easiest.
“The club’s ladies section also boasts some statistics of its own such as the fact that Rachel Cassidy holds the ladies course record of 74 and the fact that the number of members within the section has grown by 420 per cent, up from just 15 members in the year 2000 to well over 70 at present. The biggest ladies event ever to take place at Riffa was this year’s Think Pink Charity Golf Day in aid of breast cancer awareness, which boasted 98 competitors.
“Our members and guests were very entertained by our statistics board,” said Braidwood.
“When our new course, designed by Colin Montgomerie, opens next year, I am sure we will all have great fun creating new statistics and course records.”