Dornoch Newsletter 21 LR

Little did the Captain and I know what was to about
to happen as we travelled back from London on
Friday 13th March.
When we did get back to golf, competitions were
still not to be played and it wasn’t until July that we
could get back into competitive action.
With a packed fixture list it wasn’t going to be easy
to reschedule events that had not been played earlier
in the year and we tried our best to accommodate
what was ahead of us. Saying that, the ladies got
inventive and managed to squeeze in their Club
Championships and my congratulations to Caitlin
Boa and Zara MacDonald (Handicap).
On the mens side the President’s Cup was also
found a slot and Adam Mackay took the trophy
beating Bryan Urquhart in the final with Neil
Munro succeeding over Ian MacDonald in the
handicap section.
Andrew Skinner has reported all the results in the
Match and Handicap Report.
We couldn’t leave talk of competitions without
mention of the World Handicap System. By the
time you read this we are all hopeful that the system
will be in better shape than it is as I write. And if it
is, then it will be thanks to efforts of Claire and
Andrew in ensuring all our handicaps are as
accurate as they can be with the information that
the WHS has taken across from the previous
system. We are also grateful to have Alison Bartlett,
our Lady Captain, as the North Area WHS rep who
keeps us informed as well as pushing Scottish Golf.
One of the biggest and most frequent questions of
the first half of the year was whether the Carnegie
Shield would go ahead. We were all trying to make
it happen but when it became apparent that the
Shield in its usual form could not take place we did
offer all the competitors who could still travel as
much golf as we could on both our courses and
around the area. So, my thanks to our friends at
Brora, Golspie and Tain for being so
accommodating at such short notice.
Traditionally the week of the Carnegie Shield is also
the time for the Annual General Meeting, and this
year we were due to say thank you to Rob Murray for
his two years of Captaincy and welcome Willie
Mackay into the role. Our current Rules don’t allow
for anything but a physical meeting and so by
November we realised that this would not be possible
for many months and Rob stood back and Willie
became Captain Elect. This also made room for
David Bell to step into the role of Vice Captain Elect.
We all look forward to holding the AGM so these
positions can be ratified by the membership. One
final change that deserves a special mention is our
first lady Vice President, Christine Murray, stood
down after her 3 years and Alan Ramsey, the first
person to Captain the club twice, took over the role.
To finish off the piece on events I am delighted that
we are able to host the Mens Home Internationals
in April 2021. It was a great disappointment that
the September 2020 edition was cancelled but at
that time we were comforted by having the Senior
Mens Amateur to look forward to in late July 2021.
At the start of November the R&A got in touch
regarding both events as they were looking at ways
of rationalising how all their events could be run
going forward to save on staffing and resources.
There followed a number of phone calls and emails
over a period of 3 weeks as they looked at several
different options at the many venues they were
working with. The outcome was announced just
before Christmas and for us it means the “Homes”
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