Golf Vic Vol 60 No 1

fairway

BOB MULTIPLIES THE FUN

Bob Stonehouse (centre) with fellow multipliers Craig Gardiner (left) and Mitchell Gardiner (right).

On a pretty hot day in January, Neangar Park’s Bob Stonehouse rocked up to his club to play a round with his clubmates. The game was multiplier stableford, in which players multiply their stableford score by their partner’s score. Fun if you both have a minimum two stableford points; maybe not so much if one goes out on the hole. After all, zero times anything is zero. On this day Bob had two partners, being in a group of three with father and son Craig and Mitchell Gardiner. As the first-listed

player in the group on the club computer, Bob became the “swinger”. The three did very nicely indeed – Mitchell had a steady 35 points off a handicap of 29, Bob had a healthy 43 points off 21 and Craig produced an outstanding 47 points off 16. But on multiplier, Bob and Craig finished with – wait for it – 117 points, some 31 points ahead of the runners-up, Bob again with Mitchell on 86 points. Bob and Craig’s total equates to an average of over six points per hole, pretty good in itself, but it

was helped big time by the 16th. Both Bob and Craig birdied the hole for four points each, making their total 16 points on just that hole. Sixteen points on the 16th has a nice ring to it, they reckon. A former member at Eastern Golf Club, where he reached his lowest handicap of 10, Bob, now 80 years young, has been a longtime member of Neangar Park, home to rising star Lucas Herbert. And some pretty fine multipliers!

44 Golf Victoria