Spavin and Connolly take top honors in RAK Summer Open Weekend at Al Hamra and Tower Links
The first event in Ras Al Khaimah’s Summer Golf Fixtures took shape in the form of the RAK Summer Open Weekend. This was a two day event held over both of Ras Al Khaimah’s Championship golf courses (Al Hamra Golf Club and Tower Links Golf Club) over the first weekend in June. With summer temperatures looming the RAK Summer Open saw the largest field of competitors to date with golfers travelling from all over the region and beyond eager to take part in the ever growing weekend events held in Ras Al Khaimah. With two divisions, day prizes and nearest the pins there were plenty of quality prizes up for grabs for all competitors.
Day one of the event was held at Tower Links Golf Club, where competitors teed off in a 1:30pm shotgun on the challenging Championship Course under testing humid conditions. The scoring for day one turned out to be very surprising and unusual as only 5 competitors out of the whole field managed to score 36 points or more. This resulted in a very closely bunched leaderboard with the majority of competitors not far behind and still in with a shout come the final day. The best score on Day one went to Julian Hawlitzy and his efforts of 39 points giving him a 3 point lead in Division Two. The two nearest the pin prizes for day one were picked up by Justin Clark on Hole No. 4 and Dave Gould on Hole No. 16.
The second and final day of the competition took place at Al Hamra Golf Club where competitors teed of in an 8am shotgun start over the immaculate Championship Course, again under hot and humid conditions. Again the scoring was unusually low with only 4 competitors carding scores of 36 points or more making for an extremely exciting finish come the end of play. The prize for the best Day Two score was picked up by Mandie Gray and her efforts of 35 points, an 8 point improvement on her Day One efforts. The four Nearest the Pin prizes for day two were picked up by Saif Thabet on Hole No. 4, Marrion Tennant on Hole No. 7, Doug Cameron on Hole No. 11 and Hany Abdelnour on Hole No. 15.
After all the cards were collected and scores calculated the final leaderboards for both divisions proved to be very close with only 5 points separating the top three winners in Division Two. Finishing third in with scores of 28 and 42 points giving a final two day total of 70 points was Tower Links member Dave Clark. Just one point ahead of Dave was fellow Tower Links member Gerry Gibson who picked up Division Two’s Runner-Up prize after carding scores of 28 and 41 points giving a total of 71 points. Division Two Champion, finishing 4 points ahead of Gerry was Noel Connolly who produced consistent rounds of 36 and 39 points to give his winning total of 75 points.
Division One turned out to be a very close fought contest with only a remarkable 2 points separating the top 3 competitors. With scores of 35 and 33 points Saif Thabet picked up third spot with a solid total of 68 points. The Division One Champion would result in a card play-off between Andy Spavin and Dan Player as both competitors finished with a 70 points total. Dan Carded scores of 43 points followed by 27 points whilst Andy carded scores of 34 points and 36 points respectively. Unfortunately for Dan this meant that Andy was crowned the eventual winner having had the best day two score leaving Dan having to settle for Runners-Up position.
