Falamarzi shines

Awali Golf Club held the first competition of the African & Eastern fortnight – the A&E Classic, a medal format event, last Friday.

In temperatures verbalised as ‘summer’s arrived early this year’ and a light southerly wind, Mahmood Falamarzi was crowned the winner with nett-64 (gross-77), with Essa Al Qutami losing on countback (nett-64, gross-69).

The competition was the last of the 13 qualifying competitions for the season’s Clemitson Series, where singles medal format scores are aggregated, the best seven scores chosen and various prizes awarded for the gross and nett results.

A total of 1,288 rounds have been played within these 13 qualifiers. Essa Al Qutami’s gross-69 was the only sub-70 gross score achieved over these 1,288 attempts.

The club’s vice-captain, Serwin Rampersad, was master of ceremonies at the prize presentation, assisted by tournament director Rashid Al Qutami. Serwin highlighted that African & Eastern was one of the club’s longest standing and most valued sponsors, its support of the club commencing in the 1974/75 season and continuous ever since.

As is usual, score-related announcements started with the results for the ‘Twos club’, where a BD1 entry fee was paid in advance, a hole number randomly selected from those holes where any players hole-out in two shots, and those scoring two on that hole go home with their share of the entry fee pot.

The competition saw something no-one could remember having happened before: an eagle-2 on the 379 yard Hole-13, ‘Bakers Dozen’, this stunning play by Jin Keun Kim, only handicapped this season. And Hole-13 was pulled from the hat!

Jin looked extremely happy, BD58 coming his way he thought. Ha, no sirree, as he had not payed his BD1 entry fee, and so the words announced as the Twos-club result were: ‘roll-over to next week’.

Jin did not leave empty-handed though, at least his was one of the names that came out of the hat in the subsequent random raffle for players not in the main prizes.

Full results: overall winner: Mahmood Falamarzi (nett 64/gross 77), overall runner-up: Essa Al Qutami (64/69). Flight-1 1st: Mohammed Salmeen (65/71), 2nd: Jasper Meinema (69/76). Flight-2 1st: Kwang Bok Kim (65/83), 2nd: Jassim Al Ghatam (68/83). Flight-3 1st: Joan Martin (67/97), 2nd: Kerry Diaper (69/94), Chaitanya Kodange losing on countback (69/94). Nearest the pins: Flight-1 Rashid Al Qutami, Flight-2: Mahmood Falamarzi, Flight-3: Kerry Diaper.

This coming Friday sees the second competition of the African & Eastern fortnight – the A&E Stableford, this being a slightly less daunting format than the Classic medal format.