Kevin Holmes

Introduction from Kevin Holmes,
Tournament Secretary for the 2012 Bournemouth Open Golf Tournament.

Bournemouth Open Amateur Golf Tournament

Dear Bournemouth Open Competitor
Well here we are again in this Olympic Year for our 61st Tournament. Interesting to know there have been more Bournemouth Open Tournaments than Olympic Games!!!

As you will see from the 2012 poster & entry form, your Tournament Committee have made quite a few changes for this year, so I will go through them event by event.

Firstly, the Men’s 72-Hole Stroke Play, Mixed Greensomes Stableford, Ladies Greensomes Stableford, Men’s 18-hole Stableford, Mixed Foursomes Stableford & the Seniors Stableford HAVE NOT CHANGED.

Ladies – we have REDUCED the entry fee for all your Singles events from £24 in 2011 to £20 for this year in the 18-hole competitions. The Ladies 36-hole Scratch/Silver event has also been reduced from £35 down to £30. The big news is that Ladies in the Bronze Division will now have the opportunity to enter a Stableford event as an alternative to the Medal event.

There will be voucher prizes for the Stableford event but you may only win the Association Trophy if you enter the Medal competition; you cannot enter both.

Men’s 36-hole Stroke Play – you will now play on consecutive days (Thursday & Friday) over the 2 courses. This year the 1st round will be at Queens Park on the Thursday, followed by the 2nd round at Meyrick Park on the Friday.

Men’s 36-hole Scratch – will still be played on the Friday, but will now also take place over the 2 courses. The morning round will be at Queens Park followed by the afternoon round at Meyrick Park. This is a total departure from previous Tournaments & will mean a short hop over to the other course between rounds, but we hope you will enjoy this new challenge and view the event as being ‘better value for money’.

Saturday Men’s Greensomes Stableford has now been changed to a 4-Ball-Better-Ball Stableford. Again we hope you will view this as being better ‘value for money’ & more of a ‘fun format’ to end a very busy week. This year the ‘Low’ handicap range (Joint Handicaps of 0 – 24) will play at Queens Park & the ‘High’ Handicap range (Joint Handicaps of 24+) will play at Meyrick Park. There will be a ¾ Handicap stroke allowance with the maximum allowance for any one player being 18 shots.

Times - as always, I will try & accommodate people wherever possible when they have requested specific time slots for work or travel reasons, though to guarantee this you must enter early. The tee time allocations for each event are printed on this year’s Entry Form which we have to stick to rigidly. This means that we will start at 07:00 on each of the 6 days & the final tee times will be 15:00 Wednesday & Friday at Meyrick Park & 13:00 on Saturday at both courses and 14:00 at all aother times.

Allocated times will be posted on this website from the 8th May.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to ‘reserve’ entries for this year. If you wish to enter I can only put you in the start sheet after I have received payment for the competition. Once again we will have the PayPal facility (though we now have to charge an extra 5% to cover our own costs), or you can pay direct by BACS (the details are on the entry form), cheque or cash. We do not have the facility to accept credit card payments for the time being. If you were a winner in 2011, you will be receiving a personal invitation from the Committee to come & defend your Trophy in 2012.

Of course 2012 sees the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and as such the Monday & Tuesday of our week (4th & 5th June) are Public Bank Holidays. The good news is that you may only have to take 2 or 3 days holiday (instead of 5) from your work to enter this year, the not so good news is that hotel accommodation may be at a premium that week, so it may pay you to book early or maybe look at some mobile home/caravan sites instead of town centre Hotels.
The Club Company will be delighted to offer you special rates at Meyrick Park for the week and there are several other links to Bournemouth Hotels on our website.

The Presentation of Prizes will take place at 19:30 on the Saturday evening, though I cannot say whether we will be at Queens or Meyrick at this juncture. Your Committee earnestly hope and expect the 1st 3 voucher winners for each event will afford us the courtesy of attending the presentation to receive your trophy or prize vouchers. Once again we are hopeful that the Worshipful Mayor of Bournemouth (the Association’s Patron), will be able to attend our function to hand out the trophies & vouchers to the winners.

Finally, on behalf of your Tournament Committee, may I thank each of you for your continued support of the Bournemouth Open Amateur Golf Tournament over the past years and wish you all a very enjoyable & hopefully successful week of golf.

Kindest regards
Kevin Holmes

Tournament Secretary