IN Saturday’s par competition, Michael Morton topped the leaderboard with an impressive +9 at the Mount Gambier Golf Club.
Unfortunately, the effort was upstaged by Setio Prajogo-Shanahan who shot an unofficial equal course record of six-under par 66 to take out A Grade with a score of +6.
After shooting nine consecutive pars on the front nine, Prajogo-Shanahan demolished the back nine by posting 30 off the stick with an albatross two on the par-five 15th hole.
Matching the feat of Richard Gosling on the same hole back in July last year, the 40-year-old hit his drive past the fairway bunker then holed out with his second shot, a four-wood from about 180m.
Prajogo-Shanahan managed to score with a birdie on the par-three 16th hole to post consecutive twos, with just four shots needed to complete the two holes in a mind-blowing four-under par.
Having already made birdies on the 10th and 12th holes, he finished off with two pars for his round of 66.
His score could have been significantly better had his putter been working on the front nine.
Prajogo-Shanahan had birdie putts on every hole – in fact the only holes on his round where he wasn’t putting for a birdie were the 13th, where he still made par, and the 15th holes where he didn’t need to take the putter out of his bag.
As it turned out, his round was only just good enough to claim victory in A Grade, with four-time South-East Open champion Darren Bilney finishing one point back with +5.
Bilney shot an impressive five-under par 67 off the stick and would have matched Prajogo-Shanahan’s 66 had it not been for the uncharacteristic bogey on the easy par-four 18th hole.
Multiple club champion Anthony Williams also made light work of the Attamurra layout. Playing off scratch, he finished on +4 after making five birdies and dropping a shot on just one hole, the par-four 13th.
Of the 114 players in the field on the day, no less than 47 matched or beat their handicap.
Club captain Peter Waters said that effort represented “the best overall scores we’ve seen at the course for many a long day”.
Other impressive results were turned in by Peppi Pace who signed for a +6 to take out B Grade by two shots from Tim MacLean.
In C Grade it was Morton whose +9 was five shots clear of runner-up Rob McLellan.
The 56-year-old was in A Grade when he last played regularly back in 2005, but started playing regularly and competitively in November last year.
Playing off a 19 handicap last Saturday, Morton said he had struggled to hit the ball well until recently but was now getting back to something near his old form, withstanding the odd hiccup.
“Even on Saturday I left a few out there.
I drove down the middle of the fairway on the second and third holes, but ended up with double bogeys on both,” he said.
“I missed a short putt for par on the 18th which cost me another plus.”
Despite those double bogeys he still had +3 on the front nine, but dropped to +2 after another double bogey on the par-three 10th hole.
He picked up the pace on the following hole, managing six points thanks to six consecutive pars, adding another on the 17th hole with a bogey.
While Saturday’s scores were impressive, Thursday’s Stableford competition was not far behind.
The winner with 44 points was Peter Berkefeld, whose form in recent years has had the handicapper scratching his head.
Playing off single figures just three years ago, he drifted out to 21 totally perplexed by what was going wrong.
Thanks to perseverance and some advice from three of the club’s A Graders, he turned things around completely and will be back down to 12 for this week’s competition.
Berkefeld’s winning round included an excellent 39 off the stick for 23 points on the front nine, backing it up with a 40 on the back for 21 more points.
The effort was two points better than runner-up Barry Brook.
Kevin Cook and Andrew Stark both finished with 39 points after shooting even-par rounds of 72.
