Result - Winter Fourball 2025/26
They say golf is a game of inches. Today’s winter 4BBB final between Ken Marshall and Eric Lambert vs Jonathan Fletcher and Thomas McCulloch would suggest this is a gross exaggeration: more like millimetres.
Taz managed to fight his way through the assembled crowd to take the attached picture of the finalists at the first tee on Kings: although there were a few showers the weather was generally good and Kings was playing much firmer than the soggy Queens yesterday. Is there a more difficult opening hole in golf than the first on Kings? I ask because it was the only hole which was won with a bogey, every other hole was won with either par or birdie. Played in typical exemplary Dun Whinny spirit the match was as competitive as can be with never more than a hole separation. Only 3 holes changed hands on the front nine leaving Ken and Eric 1 up at the turn. After a stop for refreshment Thomas then birdied 11 to yet again get all square. Ken’s run of 4,4, 3 round 12, 13 and 14 got his side 1 up before Jonathan’s net 4 won 15. A half in 3 at 16 again kept the match square. With tension mounting Ken’s 4 at 17 put our noses in front, although only after Thomas’s putt from distance ran over the edge of the hole. A half at 18, where again Thomas had a putt run over the hole edge and Jonathan had a 6’ putt to take the game to extra holes, sealed the match. At least one person was very relieved indeed not to have to play Dun Whinny (named after the hill on the rhs) again!
A final worthy of the event, which is not always the case, and - as can be gleaned from the match report above - could so easily have gone either way. A tied match would have been a fair reflection but a ‘result’ (as football managers love to call it) was required. Kipling’s twin imposters of victory and defeat were very much in evidence.
On more personal note, the launch of Thomas’s tee shots could have been monitored by NASA and, had a camera been fitted to his yellow ball, we could have unique pictures of the Gleneagles estate from space (rivalling the pictures of far side of the moon from Artemis II). Thomas has been searching for evermore potent ciders for the ‘bus’ journey to/from St Andrews later this year: you have been warned. Jonathan, when not quizzing me on the impact of currency translation on his latest research (to be clear I am retired), has the mildly irritating habit of hitting shots when there is a good conversation developing. Ken swears: at least he swears by that weighted swing trainer he carries as his not-so-secret 15th club. His driving was excellent and - in stark contrast to Thomas - he holed a couple of monsters. My contribution to proceedings was that of the late Max Boyce ‘I know ‘cos I was there’.