The final week of March was a busy one for the Fossils.

First up on March 24 saw them head across the border and into Devon as John Raphael led them into battle at Bigbury.

Overlooking the coast, the course can feel exposed in adverse conditions but on this visit, it was a pleasant spring day that greeted the teams. A close-run match enabled both teams to travel home feeling optimistic for the return with the match left even at 4-4.

The Wednesday saw a whole bunch of Fossils make the long trip down to Perranporth to participate in the first Cornwall Seniors Golfing Association event of the year, a Four Ball Better Ball.

As anybody who knows the course, it is not for the faint hearted and fully rewards local knowledge. With the course and greens hard and extremely fast, it was unsurprising that local players dominated the top of the leaderboard which did not feature any visiting golfers.

Hopefully the next event at The Point, Polzeath, the players will experience more grass and perhaps not so very fast greens!

The next day brought a further round of the club’s Winter Greensomes where Rob Parsonage and Colin Marshall, fresh from their demolition of Allan Evans and Brian Pound, took on the fresh challenge of Ian Edwards and Pete Williams.

This match was not quite the walkover Parsonage and Marshall might have expected and indeed it took the full 18 to allow their progression to the next round.

The remaining Fossils played a three-man team event with two scores to count but only the highest and lowest.

Unfortunately, a number of teams had only two members and so a ‘ghost’ was selected at random from a number of completed cards.

This resulted in Phil Macey taking the role and he certainly did well on an individual basis by scoring an excellent 41 points (He will be the first to acknowledge this was in complete contrast to his experience at Perranporth the day before).

The Kernow course was in excellent condition and the ball ran very well on the fairways. A slight hiccup was that the greens had been very recently sanded and swept, giving variable effects on putts but even so there were a number of individuals who scored really well so that the Ghost’s score was not so extraordinary this week.

Although there were numerous individual birdies across the field, perhaps the shot of the day came from Keith Field who fired a seven-iron into the 11th green from more than 140 yards.

With the cup cut near the back edge and from where he stood, he could see the ball roll across the green to disappear. Only when he got to the flag did he spot his ball in the cup and could then celebrate a rare eagle two.

Reviewing the results this must be a first even for the Fossils, with the Ghost being placed first, second and third and even the placings in a stableford score being decided by a hundredth of a point!

Results: 1 Malcolm Smith, James Simpson and Ghost – 82; 2 Alec Brannan, Alan Malvern and Ghost – 77.38; 3 Allan Joel, Phil Macey and Tony Prout – 77.37; 4 Melvyn Carter, Brian Pound and Tony Hurley – 75.