RS XXII, 2025 - Dundonald Links

A few notable mentions: 

• M Noonan recorded his maiden Rim Stinger title at the 12th attempt, defeating J Stewart at the second hole of the first ever Rim Stinger play off. Noonan had led from 1 st green to 18th green but couldn’t quite pull clear of Stewart’s challenge and comeback. A rare Noonan blob and an unlikely Stewart par via a 12ft putt on the 18th tied things up. Advantage Stewart down the 19th but good scrambling from Noonan kept things level. A wild drive from Noonan on the 20th but an even-wilder one from Stewart (lost ball) finally separated them. The iconic battle is represented in graph form on the next page. - Important life lessons were a theme of RS XXII.

  • o LL1: Alternative Facts are not a Thing. R Aylmer made an extraordinary claim that he had never scored 39 points at the Rim Stinger and would play off scratch if wrong. Confronted with evidence from the website, previous reports and ultimately his own engraving of the RS trophy that this was untrue he would still not believe it. He still doesn’t. He was issued with a two shot cut for denial of facts.

  • o LL2: Hubris is a Thing. Naming a potential grand slam of titles after yourself is not likely to go down well. A three shot cut was applied to R Jones for this p iece of conduct unbecoming.

  • o LL3: Don’t stand anywhere on the golf course within 180 degrees of the CHC. Although blessed with the strongest shout of “Fore” in the g roup, this is not matched by judgement on when to play a shot or discretion on whether to advise fellow players he is about to do so. A traumatic weekend for the OCC was almost capped by an Exocet from the CHC’s thinned 9 iron which avoided deathly contact by inches. The CHC’s cut for this dangerous conduct is an open item for the next RS HC meeting.

• - R Aylmer secured his second Bag o’Shite. A shocking performance all round really. 16 points on Day 1. Any possible raise for Day 2 was snuffed out by LL1 (see above) and 16 points were again scored on Day 2. Perhaps without the LL1 cut he could have at least forced a BoS play off. Perhaps he will now learn the LL. Perhaps.

• - The RS Challenge was won by J Emmerson, on debut. Classic stuff. Mid table Day 1, in the BoS mix Day 2, gets a raise for Day 3, romps home with the money. In truth it was a near flawless round of 38 points. J Emmerson rockets to the top of the RS Index, albeit asterisked for having only appeared once.

• - The Pairs title was taken by A Large (on debut) and R Jones (aka “Large Dick Energy”). In a great battle with defending pairs winners M Noonan and S Olliver, the title was snatched by one point via an R Jones birdie at the 18th. Having had his NTP and LD just pipped earlier in the round, then losing the pairs title to the last putt of the competition, you have to give Matt credit for not completely collapsing in the subsequent RS play off when he was so nearly pipped to that title too.

• - Despite a hefty, but not Hendersonian, cut of six for the final round, M Noonan still registered the most points of the weekend with 105 and even challenged for the money. Next best was S Olliver with 96. 105 points was more than double the efforts of R Aylmer (51). Some fallow years could be in prospect for this performance.