TONY WALKER

Many thanks for your email.

The incident you refer to occurred as a result of an unusual combination of circumstances. Normally, a greens staff member would have completed the repositioning of the pins by the time the first golfers caught them up. However, on this occasion, the greens staff member concerned was, exceptionally, tasked also with ensuring fairway bunkers were raked and prepared for the day. This meant  that there was a slight delay in setting the last couple of pin positions (they don’t necessarily do them in hole order but rather in a quicker more efficient order based on green location).

Lessons from that day have been learned and, therefore, repositioning the pins will be a priority. However, on a competition day, should the repositioning of the pins not be completed by the time the first golfers play the hole(s) affected, then a decision would be made for the pin positions on those holes to remain as they are.

The 3 members affected by this incident were contacted by either the Chair of Greens or Chair of Handicap, and all appeared satisfied with the outcome. They were all refunded their competition fees, one members asked for his card to be counted for handicap purposes as a general play card, and the other 2 were happy for their cards to be discarded.

I hope that helps to explain the context of this unfortunate set of circumstances, and to reassure you that measures are in place to mitigate the chances of a reoccurrence.