East Midlands Packaging Society Golf Day 4th October 2010

[Martin Hardwidge]

After the filthy weather of the previous weekend, thirty brave souls ventured over to Newark Golf Club on Monday 4th October for the East Midlands Packaging Society Golf competition; to be greeted with warm late summer sun, a golf course in beautiful condition and an excellent afternoon’s game.

Players assembled from as far afield as Manchester and Northampton to compete for the magnificent Norcros Bowl, a silver trophy donated by Norcros’ Managing Director John Briggs in 1975 and played for by members of the Institute of Packaging and now Packaging Society ever since.

After a bacon roll, everyone trekked out to play an 18 hole stableford competition, with prizes for longest drives, nearest pins, the best visitors (non-IOM3 members) and the leading lady, plus certain ‘spot’ prizes awarded on the basis of exceptional service to the day’s amusement. Notable among these was David Smalley, winner of the ‘Forget me own head next’ prize for forgetting to bring all the prizes, resulting in a 50-mile round trip to retrieve them from home and a breathless arrival on the first tee. Andrew Hardwidge was awarded the ‘Beau Geste’ trophy for managing to find sand on three separate occasions on the same hole. Newark Golf Club is rightly famous for its excellent food, and we all enjoyed a superb dinner after the round.

The visitor’s men’s prize was won by Graham Heywood, and the Ladies winner was Viv Overton. They both shared a points score of 39 points with the winner of the Norcros Bowl, Martin Hardwidge, who won the trophy for a fourth time.