Petersen Texas Scramble - 1st June 2020

Thanks to our President Ian Petersen, we were lucky enough to secure 8 flights at Hong Kong Golf Club starting from 8:04am till 9:00am. A group of expectant golfers gathered at the HKFC around 6:15am in the morning and I could feel everyone’s passion since most of us has not been able to play golf for months. We were also blessed with lovely weather:- 30 degrees temperatures with a gentle breeze.

For those who do not know, “scramble” is a fun format where the team is able to select the best shot from the whole team and then play the next shot from that position. This means you also get 4 chances at every putt! However there is usually another “tweak” to this format, which is that the team has to take a minimum number of tee shots from each team member.

The first team to play were Jukka Hakli, Chris Meecham, Thomas Yiu and me. We started the round pretty solidly with drives down the middle of the fairway and greens in regulation. Annoyingly however we just couldn’t convert our 10 foot opportunities into birdies which is vital in this format. To compound problems, Thomas was so excited that he was struggling to drive successfully and we were only able to take 2 of his drives out of the first 15 holes meaning no matter where his next drives went, we were going to have to use 2 of them. Hole 16, is a 180 yards par 3 with plenty of green to work with. Thomas actually mishit his hybrid but the ball kept rolling to the target and stopped just 5 feet from the hole. We were so excited that finally the pressure is gone and we finally made our second birdie. This gave us a spark and we birdied all of the last 3 holes! This gave us 3 under gross and a nett 58 to claim second place.

The second to tee off were Ian Petersen, Steven Knight, Chris Burley and Andrew Wood. This is a very competitive scramble team as Andrew has a good long game and Chris has wonderful putting skills. Ian told me they thought they will have a few bogeys at the back nine since they had 4 birdies in the front nine. They just kept on their momentum and shot 2 under for the back nine! The winner and the first runners up actually came down to the last putt. Jukka and I were watching the last putt in which Ian’s team had a 10-footer and 3 of them missed to the right. Chris Burley had been watching his teammates putt closely which helped him to convert the last putt to a birdie! A wonderful round with 5 under gross and 14 under net 57 to claim the first place!

This year is definitely the President’s year as his team won the president Cup and now he won the Petersen Texas Scramble with one shot! Congratulations!

Here is the breakdown of the event

Happy Golfing

Ted