On Monday 6th of November we met Silves International Golf Club to fight for the Silves Challenge Trophy. It is the second year the two clubs have met for a nice round of golf.
38 players from each club competed in a very friendly atmosphere. People enjoyed coming together on a beautiful day, and many attended a very good lunch afterwards.
Most of the matches were very tight and finished all square.

This week saw the annual converging of SdM's Past Captains, all attended except Ray Groves who was unavailable as was current Captain Per Lars Tonstad.

The keenly contested stableford competition was played in very blustery and overcast conditions. We did have a very brief shower but generally very good weather.

The day was organised by Euan Pyper, he did his typically thorough job, everything running smoothly on the day and then for the lunch the following afternoon. Many thanks must go to the staff at Primavera in Carvoeiro for providing a superb meal.

There was the usual prize giving and a glass was raised in memory of Mark Ellerton who sadly passed away earlier in the year. He was sadly missed.

Congratulations to Ronnie Wraith, one week after claiming the Club Championship he managed a hole in one at Silves. It was on the 15th, 148yds and Ronnie hit Pitching Wedge just past the pin and saw it spin back into the hole.

Unsurprisingly Ronnie also won nearest the pin!

Well done Champ!

Thanks to everyone who helped make it a great day and an unforgettable experience. We enjoyed every minute of it, from the early morning until the late evening. A lot of people contributed, and we only met smiling faces and happy players. Thanks to all the volunteers, you made a great effort to make this happen.
We were lucky with the weather, can´t ask for more than this in the end of September. Everyone appreciated the half way food. Thanks to Bedi who brought the cod tongues the long way from Barents Sea north of Norway to Algarve. Yes, it is correct, you were eating cod tongues!
We had a wonderful evening at Vale d Oliveiras, a beautiful venue, and the food was very good.
Thank you so much.

Results:

Today we played an important IL-match against Carvoeiro. They arrived with a lot of confidence and many players with low hcps. We realized that this would be a battle. It didn´t help that we were missing one player minutes before tee off. She had gone to a wrong course, Gramacho, and was waiting for us there. Luckily she came to Silves on time, and managed to win the game!
This was our last match this season. With this win we will stay first or second in our division, depending of some other matches, but we are confident of promotion to second division next year.
This is a great result for the club. Congratulations to all the players today, and to everyone contributed this year. A special thank you to Richard Emrich, who has prepared the score cards for all home matches. It is so easy to come to the club house early in the morning and just pick up the score cards, we do not appreciate that there is a lot of work behind this.

Thanks to all of you.

So there we were the Interleagus and promotion;
The fat (rotund in this PC world) lady was warming up;
The champagne was chilling nicely;
All the chickens were counted;
The ducks were nicely in a row ... and then
Well there are many truisms in life;
Every cloud has a silver lining (not if you grew up in Sunderland - it just meant it was going to rain more)
The cheque is in the post (never has been)
Cheer up it could get worse (tried it once - it just got worse)
And the biggest lie of all
"home advantage is massive in golf"

So today we met our friends from Levante for the third time this season, now I didnt want to mention this before but these guys actually knocked us out of the cup AT SILVES earlier this year, we compounded the sin by beating them at their patch on Tuesday and so.....