Lost Bougle XIV – Things Get Wild!

In November 2023 the Gents Tour returned to Lost Farm and Barnbougle Dunes for the 14th edition of our most prestigious and terrifying Major tournament! Who would bring the hot golf this time?

Warm Up Day

Leroy, Ian and TJ played Barny on the Thursday. There was some hot golf from Leroy including a ridiculous monster birdie putt on the 16th to sink Ian 3&2 in their matchplay. One of the boys had a sore back, another wanted to retire and the last one was revelling in his display of HOT GOLF!

Day One : Lost Farm

Defending champ and Grand Conjurer TJ got the tournament started with a spellbinding circular ball toss to decide the groups! Da da dada lada da da da da, da da dada lada da da da da da, da dadalada da dadalada, dadaladadadalada ladaladaladalada!!

A perfect but hot day at Lost Farm with the traditional midday tee off to allow Cravo and Bas to drive up from Hobart on the morning. (Bas pictured below)

Group One: TJ, Bas and Ian

Ian striped one off the first tee but TJ and Bas were sketchy left and had some issues to start with. Ian drained some great 4-5m one putt pars on the front nine and hit controlled fades for a very very nice 43 shots in total. A leetle beet more slicey rather than fadey on the back for Ian with a couple disaster holes on ten and eleven setting him back and some lip out putts not helping the cause. A +5 on handicap for the day. Pretty great! See the form below!

Basil’s driving was off (for him!) and he could often be heard mouthing off immediately after his shot with something like “OH NO! CRAP SHOT YOU IDIOT! THAT’S IN THE BUNKER. IDIOT!” (except it was actually fine in the fairway), or “OH GREAT SHOT BASIL YOU GALAH! THAT’S GONE NOWHERE!” (except the approach shot finished about 1m from the pin). He put up a contender for Best Shot on the par 4 7th hole where he hit 7 iron to a couple of foot and an easy birdie. A HOT -2 on handicap, 79 off the stick. That is what we expect from the Great Basil. The occasional back-handed trick shot is also in his kitbag (see pic).

TJ had to battle tennis elbow and heel blisters today and could not get his A Game going. He was thinking if I can just get on a roll with a few pars then I will try harder but it didn’t quite happen so he didn’t quite try. Usually the not caring is a recipe for HOT GOLF for TJ but not on this occasion. A +8 on handicap was his worst round here for years! Middle of the pack though so hardly a reason to retire from golf again!

Group Two : Felix, Jamie and the two Leighs

Jamie hit some great shots from near the green – including a contender for Best Shot with a 60m approach to the 12th hole to a few foot. Did very well in lasting the entire round and even helped Cravo hit a fabulous drive on the 7th by talking cutely during his backswing.

Felix (putting in the pic above) had a tough gig here carrying heavy clubs and pushing a small-wheeled pram through soft sand all day. A little bit of assist from Cravo, but a tough day out. His golf reflected that other than a handful of easy pars it was a wayward afternoon. Best things were his pure 6 iron into the wind on the 15th and a few nice drives. +11 on handicap.

Leroy (below) drove it great today and played solid but got killed by four disaster holes. If you gave him bogeys on those then he played to handicap for the day. He hit 12 of 14 fairways and made some very nice pars on the 3rd, 6th and incredibly on the 8th by holing a two way curling putt from about 15m. But his sore back contributed to a few errant swings including a few extra on the eleventh that led to an easy tap-in for an 11 (to blow 6 handicap shots on one hole). +13 for the day

Cravo striped driver on the A line on the first hole and hit 7 iron onto the green to set up a long eagle putt – made easy par. He hit it great all day and also played smart hitting irons off the tee to fat bits of fairways where possible. Hit 12 of 14 fairways, 11 GIRs, 1 penalty and had 33 putts. Great display of ball-striking – the boys called it a clinic! Shot 80 off the stick for a -8 on handicap.

Day One leaderboard

Cravo -8, Bas -2, Ian +5, TJ +8, Felix +11, Leroy +13

The boys put on a fun quiz and birthday cake for Ian and Cravo that night to mark their 40th and 50th, which led to contagious laughter from Felix that tipped Leroy over the edge into an explosion of what sounded like some cross between a duck and a plover, followed by some black cockatoo skrarking. Everyone’s tummies hurt and eyes watered! Here’s an example of Leroy’s genius quiz questions which started it all :

Since Cravo’s leather wedding anniversary how many women have held office as a British Prime Minister?

and

When the Ad campaign known as “where the bloody hell are ya?” was released, what was Cravo’s golf handicap?

Day Two – Windy As at Barny

Well, it wasn’t too bad to start but it quickly got up to King Island bad with wind gusts up to 50kmh – culminating in Basil going full Phil Mickelson on the 7th hole stopping his ball from rolling back past him and off the green. Twice! He hit good 4m putts that got near the hole but then the insane Westerly winds blew the ball all the way back to him and would have rolled all the way back off the green if he didn’t stop it. This didn’t happen to anyone else so he just got unlucky with the gust of the day. Rather than DQ Bas we just gave him the actual strokes taken and an asterisk. Leroy may have picked up a DQ/asterisk as well by replacing a marked ball when he removed the marker and the ball started blowing away. But we actually told him to do it. There were some laughs – Cravo creased himself on 7th at all the terrible tee shots and when he missed a downwind tap in and it rolled 3m past. There were even some good shots, nay great shots, like Leroy’s awesome iron on the par three thirteenth that looked like it was going in for a hole-in-one and all of us were barracking. But definitely a brutal day out!

We all scored 100+ for the day, including the Great Basil. Unheard of! At least for Basil.

Leaderboard after Day Two :

Cravo +5, Basil +18, Ian +20, Felix +28, Leroy +30, TJ +34

Day Three

Unfortunately the forecast for winds up to 60kmh from midday led the Tour’s Player Advisory Committee to make the unprecedented decision to abandon the third round….aaaand to go play some teams ambrose for 9 holes at Scottsdale GC instead. Good call boys.

So that was that – Cravo wins! The only change to the Day Two scores and the results was Basil calling some penalties on himself for the stomping on golfball x 2 incident and hittting a moving ball – relegating himself to third place.

The Worm and Final Results

Cravo WIN +5 (-8, +13) black worm

Ian 2nd +20 (+5,+15) blue worm

Bas 3rd +24 (-2,+26) green worm*

Felix and Jamie 4th +28 (+11,+17) grey worm

Leroy 5th +30 (+13,+17) yellow worm

TJ 6th +34 (+8, +26) orange worm

TJ loves handing the Bougle trophy over to Cravo!

Ian loves handing the Best Shot trophy to Leroy!

Winner sized wine.