BGC Shootout Final

The third iteration of the BGC Shootout was played and won yesterday and it just gets better as it develops. This year’s edition was kindly sponsored by Peter Walker and is now known as the NVP Shootout…thank you Peter for your generous support, but more on that a little bit.

A big thank you must go out to Joe and Reece for the background work to get this thing going and keeping tabs on all the scores coming in over the course of the year. Thank you also to Tyla, Nick, and Dylan for helping the cat herding process on the day.

With a new sponsor, and with the club kicking in as well (thanks Geoff), came an extra pot of gold for those 19 players who qualified so it turned out the even if you were knocked out on the first hole, you received your money back, but the winner walked away with $675…more than some of the players at the recent Aus Open took home.

For the uninitiated, the NVP Shootout commences with all 19 players teeing off the first hole and playing the same hole all at once. The first hole yesterday took us 35 minutes, which is actually pretty good going, and is probably the only time no one will receive a letter for slow play. The 2 players with the highest nett score on that hole goes home…or stays and heckles. That continues until there is only 3 left standing on the 9^th tee.

Now to some highlights, or lowlights depending on which side of the coin you were on:

The day started with Peter Morgan pulling out due to COVID, which opened the door for our Vice President Deb Kember to join the fray. Unfortunately, Deb had injured her back and could not participate in the Shootout, but helped with official photography and caddying…thank you Deb. It would have been first time Husband/Wife played this event together and would have been fun to watch the competition…my money would have been on Deb…sorry David.

The first hole was all nerves and some good shots being played. There was a chip off to determine the first of the vanquished and it happened to be Bruce Chatfield. It must also be said that our sponsor, who managed to qualify, was also in this chip off, but survived. The second hole was very eventful with a 4 way chip off between Yvonne Butcher, Kim Knight, Mike Waldie, and Mike Murphy. Yvonne and Kim almost holed their putts and left both Mikes to pack up. There were 2 more chip offs on holes 3 and 4 which saw two of our ex-presidents, and our current President, (David Prince, Phil Wikman, Mark Deuble…well done Mark for making it past the first hole this time) miss out on advancing.

The 5th hole, as expected, proved a tough one with Kobus Terblanche and Pete Horchner dropping out. From here things got very interesting and very tense. The 6^th hole saw two of our ladies, Margot McNee and Yvonne Butcher (who both played beautifully up to this point) leave the Shootout as they both had their issues with a bunker or 2 and unfortunately left the fray. The 7^th saw yet another chip off involving our sponsor, whose tee shot ended up near the 2^nd fairway. He survived, leaving Ned O’Connor to take home $100 for the day. Unfortunately, it was also the hole that claimed Kim Knight, whose husband Rod had played in this event twice…and never made it past the 4^th hole…bragging rights for 12 months in the Knight household I’d imagine.

The 8th hole had our sponsor take driver, you’ll have to ask him why, with the ball ending up 3 inches away from the cross creek but ended up on green for 2. Another chip off saw Ian Burgess and Andrew Mullis, the latter sinking a downhill, snaking 40 footer to have Ian join Graham Paul in the exit stakes, and having Andrew reinforce his nickname of the Silent Assassin.

With 3 players left, Brett Weick, Andrew Mullis, and Peter Walker (who spent the whole day trying to recoup his sponsorship money) it was nerves a plenty with a timely reminder that this hole was worth $675 to the winner. With Peter and Andrew in the trees on the left, Brett decided that he only wanted to have 160M into the green and hit his best drive of the day. He then proceeded to put his second to 15 foot, leaving both Andrew and Peter to sink their respective 25 footers to at least halve the match…neither did and Brett emerged victorious, well done Brett!

Thank you to all who participated in this event, and to the spectators who stuck around, we hope you had some fun on the day. It was played in the right spirit of fun with just enough competitiveness to make things interesting. The NVP Shootout will be played again next year, so look out for notifications of entry…it promises to be bigger and better than this year!