SOS 2026 BENKERR CUP FINAL

The battle for the 2026 Benkerr Cup, fought over 3 and 10 October, proved to be a cliffhanger with the combined result a difference of just 0.62 points.

The weather forecast promised many showers! However, while rain fell both before and after the competition, blue skies and little wind prevailed during play! Spring at its best!

 The winners for the Best Represented Country went to Lynne & Lynley seen below in their impressively draped cart!

Lynley & Lynne's cart bedecked with all things Aussie Aussie Aussie !

Shelley, sandwitched between 'ROW's' Peter and Gerry

Greg Ben'kerr'nett and Faye Millar proudly
 representing the Aussie contingent!

Andrea, Roland & Barry recite Coops'
 pep talk message before commencement of battle!

 Gooch being sledged before the game
 by Birgit, Roland & Barry - on instructions by ROW's Captain, Coops!

A smart cart!
Guess the owner

There is no doubt which team Gerry and Birgit represent!

There is a lot of experience in this ROW group!

Greg with Shelley, showing
off her Aussie golf shirt!

Paul B, Dave M & Karl ready to roll.

Coops quietly recites his pep talk before striking the ball

 

SOS President's News

Anniversary celebrations to Earle who has marked his 74th birthday on Sunday, 11 October!

Next Week members will contest the Memorial Cup which will be played on the Tuart Course, commencing at 7.40am! It will be a stableford competition.

The SOS 2026 Gala Dinner is being held on Saturday, 28 November. The venue is being kindly provided by the Popes' at the Innaloo Lot Six Zero Eatery. If you (& partner / guest) wish to attend, please contact Paul Gardner or Shelley which will allow SOS to get an idea of numbers.  Further details will be provided later.

The Benkerr Cup Results

 And the winner is . . . . . . R O W . . . . . . by 0.62 strokes, the narrowest of margins!

The Australian team, after winning Round 1 by a margin of 1.62 strokes, were outclassed by a resurgent ROW team which scored a margin of 2.24 strokes in Round 2.

ROW's Captain Coops, supported by Roland & Gerry,
grasps the Benkerr Cup and celebrate the close win,
 while Greg and the Aussie team ponder a missed opportunity! 

While the winning margin of 0.62 strokes was narrow, the ROW teams was assisted by 3 factors:

(i) a mesmeric digital pep talk sent by ROW Captain Paul 'Coops' Cooper to his team on the eve of the final round,

(ii) the results of Round 2 included top scores to 3 ROW contestants who took out 1st, 2nd & 3rd places; with the top 11 places taken by 9 ROW'ers, and

(iii) the absence of Colin Kerr (the kerr in the Benkerr Cup) who is recovering from a dodgy knee injury. Colin's scores are usually high and may have made a difference had he been able to play! Get well soon Colin.

Individual Scores for 10 October

Eagles & Birdies

Despite the excellent conditions, there were no Eagles and only 4 birdies recorded:

Gim on hole 3

Barry on hole 7

Karl on hole 17, and

Faye on hole 18

Novelties

The Golden Hole was valued at a measley $40 and unclaimed.

Hole 6 - nearest to pin in 1  -  Lynne Malone

Hole 9 - Ladies longest drive  -  Birgit, outdriven by Faye, bettered by Maureen

Hole 11 - nearest to pin in 3  -  Paul B, bettered by Karl, beaten by Greg

Hole 15 - Men's longest drive  -  Paul B

Hole 18 - nearest to pin in 1  -  Karl , but Goochy closer and Maureen closest!

The Ash Tray Collection

The Australian team provided the fines caller and collectors and all players were back to an equal footing as a total of $25.60 was raised for falling foul of the SOS fines listing.

Glen collects Ash Tray donations from Gim for
 one of her several transgressions!

The Raffle Draw

Glen won the 1st prize in the raffle draw receiving a $10 Wembley Gift Card. 

A total of 69 numbered tokens were in the barrel.

1st prize in the raffle draw is won by Glen!

 . . . . . . . and a few thoughts to sharpen up your game . . . . . . 

A video from Karl that may or may not load 😆

Many thanks to several contributors, particularly Gerry for the 'Benkerr' picture at the top of the blog and all cartoons! Blog fodder also gratefully received from Karl, Andrea, Faye & Shelley.

And apologies for the late blog release caused by a combination of watching some of the Bathurst 1000 race on Sunday (during the last 3 laps the top 4 cars were only separated by 1.7 seconds after completing 154 of the 157 laps - with the leader running out of fuel on the last lap😝), technical issues transferring pics from my iPhone to my Gmail account; also making many attempts to drag Karl's video into the blog with uncertain results).😖 

End

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THE BENKERR CUP - ROUND 1 (THE OLD)

 

Last week we saw the playing of The Presidents Cup at Medinah CC at Illinois, USA and this week we commenced the main attraction, The Benkeer Cup named in honour of the Club's two longstanding members, Greg Bennett and Colin Kerr. The tournament is played over two weekends, round 1 on The Old and round 2 on The Tuart. Unfortunately Colin couldn't play because he has injured his knee.

Conditions could not have been better with a light breeze, maximum temperature of 21 degrees, not a cloud in the sky and a good field of 24 players - 13 representing the Rest of the World (ROW) and 11 representing Australia (Aus).

The lengths each player went to display their allegiance varied greatly with zero effort by some to extreme patriotic displays by others as illustrated in the following pre-match photos.

Excellent effort by Lynne, Lynley and Shelly representing Australia and Birgit representing the EU (specifically Germany)

Great cart work as usual by Lynne and Lynley

Lynne and Lynley went to great lengths to show their allegiance, right down to their socks 

Shelly had the perfect head gear for our extreme UV and her LIV Golf Ripper GC shirt, the same shirt she was wearing when she was hurling cups of beer at the players on the Watering 12th Hole at The Grange course last year.

Earle and Barry made no effort at all

Coops was colour coordinated in his Africa shirt and just happened to also be woofing off a bacon and egg toasty. - how unusual? 

Nice contrast in this photo, minimal to no effort in the left side pairing, Goochy went all out down to his Jesus sandals and Garry sporting a tartan cap.

SPOTS OF BOVVER

Faye and Roland (who had a shocking day out) seemed to come off worst than the rest of the field as illustrated in the following photos.

Faye with no backswing.

Faye again in an impossible position.

Roland gesticulating about something (possibly why me God). Thankfully we have no audio.

Steph & Birgit KO'd by a wayward drive from Thom 

Steph in the woods on the 12th with what appears top be a tent, or is that an umbrella or just an optical illusion?

Prior to the presentation Gerry announced members birthdays for which there was only one and that was Earle 

THE RESULTS

THE WINNERS

The individual Stapleford winners for the day were Coops (ROW) with a very impressive 40 points followed by Gary (ROW) in second  and on count back Greg (Aus) both on 36 points.

THE LOLLIES

The lollies went to out Captain Roland on 21 points

BIRDIES

Hole 16 - Coops and Goochy

Hole 11 - Gary

Hole1 - James

Hole 3 - James

THE OVERALL STANDING AT THE COMPLETION OF ROUND 1

The stableford score for each team is taken by adding up the sum of scores and dividing it by the number of players in each team leaving us with Australia on 30.54 and ROW on 28.92 points.

NOVELTIES

There was a lot of confusion involved in putting out the novelties so following is the best interpretation of what happened.

Silver Hole #2 - Club

Longest Putt #9 - Earle (his birthday present)

Nearest in 3, originally meant to be Hole #10 but ended up Hole #14 - Keith

Nearest the Bunker, originally meant to be Hole #14 but ended up being Hole #17 - Faye

Nearest the stick on Hole #15 - Popey followed by Lynley

Golden Hole #16 - Club

THE WHEEL OF FURTUNE

We had a great response with all numbers sold and demand for still more. Frst number out winning a $10 voucher was Lucky Dave Millar.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

The Clubs social highlight of the year "The Gala Dinner" will once again be held, through the generosity of the Popes, at Lot Six Zero on Saturday 28 November. Details to follow.

Next week its Round 2 of The Benkerr Cup to be played on the Tuart with a tee off time of 8.20. last years winners were ROW so lets see if Aus can retain their lead and take it out this year.

Country Cup @ Pinjarra GC

                                    

                                                                            

16 SOS’lers and three of Kristian’s plus 2 of Gardy's mates made the trip to the countryside to battle it out for the Country Cup — or perhaps they simply fancied a stroll around a beautiful golf course! ⛳️

What a gorgeous place! 💖💖💖

BEFORE THE GAME

Boris trying to get to grips
with the unfamiliar scorecard.

Derek calculating his strokes as well

Kristian and his buddies

Gardy & Earle

What may look like a photo from the Covid era,
is actually a warm “hello and welcome back”
to President Gerry!

Look who is back on the putting green
for the first time
since his leg surgery a few weeks ago.

DURING THE GAME

Bridge, barrier, Tee-off on the other side?
Not rocket science!
Park your cart and walk over to the other side.

Peter's weird choice of a club...

Fortunately, he changed his mind
and used his 9-iron to chip the ball
out onto the fairway

Indeed, it’s a challenging course!

"PLOP" 😏😆😖

What we need are floating balls.

Earle in trouble

Peter...

...on a successful...

... fishing expedition...

Peter, pls don't take it that far though...

... you might end up with more balls
than you bargained for.

Grizzly is happy to be back!

AFTER THE GAME

Oupsie! Luckily the proshop had
a well-equipped fridge with beers,
mixers & softdrinks.

The results

Kristian won his first SOS cup with a perfect score of 36 points, closely followed by Maureen and Lynley both with 34 points.

The unlucky fourth,  Shelley, lost her place on the podium on countback.

The podium

Only 3 birdies ✌

Kristian on #2

Paul B on #3

Gim, with a great shot out of the bunker on the 18th. 

What were the chances that two of the three  players with a birdie were the winner and the lollie bearer?

and the novelties:

5 novelties, 5 different winners. 💪👏

NP #2                        the one and only Gary B

NP #4                        Gary again, followed by Lynne, beaten by Tom

Closest in 3 #8          Gary, beaten by Lynne

NP # 11                      the one and only Paul B

NP #15                       the one and only Kristian 

Paul B. shouting out the fines,
collecting the impressive sum of $ 54.25

WHAT ELSE IS ON?

• In a short speech, Gerry thanked Gardy, Shelley & Rolie for their excellent organisation of the Country Cup.

• reminded the members that next week the first part of our Benkerr Cup will take place. This is our very own SOS Ryder Cup, where Australia plays against the rest of the world (ROW). Please wear a shirt and/or cap that represents your country.

• Gerry advised that our annual "Gala Dinner" will take place on 29th November. The evening celebrates all winners of the past season. Please reserve the date, more details to follow. 


• Starting from October, we will initiate recruiting more players, all SOS members are encouraged to bring friends & family for a couple of game trials. We do have 6 free spaces.

    THE END