Greetings from John Murray
Moray Golf Club - PGA Golf Professional

I hope you've all had a fantastic week on and off the golf course and welcome to another exciting edition of the Moray Pro Shop weekly newsletter, bringing you up-to-date with all the latest news and gossip from within the walls of MGC.

Shop Opening Hours

The new shop hours will be as follows from Sunday, 29 October

Monday - Friday 9.00am - 4.00pm
Saturday & Sunday 8.00am - 4.00pm

New Stock

Last week I took the trip through to Nairn Golf Club for a FootJoy and Titleist stockroom to place my orders for next year. FootJoy have a huge range of shoes on offer for next year in both spiked and spikeless models. Our shop selections below included the new D.N.A (left), ProSL (middle) and Contour (right) shoes for the men, a new junior ProSL, a spiked classic shoe and a spikeless casual shoe for the ladies (bottom right).

Titleist have just released their new range of irons and hybrids which we already have in the shop and available in demo sets. There is a whole new range of golf bags which all look great, however prices certainly look to be on the increase for 2018. So if you’re looking for a good price on a bag I would look to take advantage of this year’s prices before they increase.

I haven't seen any quite yet, however I have been told that there will be a new range of Scotty Cameron putters and Vokey wedges coming around April time.

We are now a Premier Fitting Account with Titleist and as such we will have 3 full trial sets available and one of every wedge available for demo when these are launched.

In the meantime, we have a few Vokey SM6 wedges available to buy at a clearance price of £89.99 (stock only) and a number of ex demo wedges available at £69.99!

Shot Clock Masters

The European Tour have announced the Shot Clock Masters in Austria in June will be the first tournament in professional golf to use a shot clock on every shot in the tours bid to combat slow play.

Each player will get 50 seconds to play their shot (first shot in a group) with 40 seconds given to subsequent players. Players will incur a one shot penalty for each bad time that occurs which will be shown as a red card against their name on the leaderboard. Each player will be allowed to call 2 time-outs where they will be allowed twice the allotted time.

The tour hope to reduce round times by around 45 minutes with three-balls reduced to around 4 hours and two-balls around 3 hours and 15 minutes.

What's your view on this? Do you think this is likely to help?

Keep an eye out next season for our speed golf event which we hope to try out over 9 holes. This will be one of many ‘Fun Themed” events alongside a Par 3 Challenge, Night Golf and Masters Sunday Shootout!!

Hickory Golf Anyone?

Junior Tour Roundup (Derek)

Last week, Alan Cowie and I took 8 of Moray GC's juniors away for 3 days on their end of season tour. We based ourselves in Dundee for 3 days while we played Lundin Links, St Andrews Eden and Blairgowrie Lansdowne. With hurricane Ophelia closing in the weather forecast looked pretty terrible for Monday and Tuesday, however as quite often is the case the weather man was wrong.

We survived a soaking on Monday at Lundin and the high winds of Tuesday relented as we made our way onto the Eden. While in St Andrews we also managed to get a round on the Himalayas putting green. On our final day of the trip we headed to Blairgowrie to take on their junior team in a friendly match. This was played on the Lansdowne course and although our team lost 4.5-1.5, two of the matches were lost on the last hole. A great experience for the kids to play 3 top courses and for some of them a chance to make their debut for the team.

On a final note I would just like to thank Graham Broad, Alan Cowie, Farquhar Thomson and Neil McConnachie who made this tour possible. Their continued support of the Moray GC juniors is amazing and without them these things wouldn't be possible.

The children paid a very nominal amount for the trip and this is due to the Golf Club and generosity of members throughout the year. Club Captain Roy, Stevie Grant and Joanne for everything they done to help the tour and also throughout the year. I would like to thank all that participated in the Junior Texas Scramble fund raiser, which raised money for the junior section and also the juniors who wanted to donate to the fund

With a special mention to Graham Masson who’s kind donation was greatly appreciated. Finally to Stuart Tatters who helped take some of the team members on course and in practice sessions throughout the winter months. His knowledge and ability is an inspiration to the juniors. Last but by no means least, John Murray who is a massive supporter of junior golf. John allows me time off to take the kids on trips like this, hold coaching sessions and without his support none of this would be possible.

Apologies if I’ve missed anyone, as you can imagine junior golf is a hugely important area and something we will strive to keep progressing into 2018 and beyond.

Regards Derek

Winter Cup - Week 1 - November 4/5th

It's that time of year again! Winter is finally here on the weekend of the 4th & 5th November. The clocks have gone forward and the winter cup begins.

Click here for a full fixture list and to view the winter cup rules and regulations.

This year’s main changes are that you can now have more than one score from a weekend to count towards your overall points total and we will be asking everyone to try to enter their cards into the computer in the clubhouse just like the summer competitions. This will allow for scores and handicap adjustments to be made much quicker than previous years.

Any questions or feedback, then please click here to give me your opinions.

Prize Giving

The 2017 annual prize giving will take place next Friday evening in the clubhouse. Our resident secretary, Stevie Grant will taking to the stage to announce the winners and I look forward to congratulating all of you who are picking up some silverware on the night. The prize giving will commence at 7.30pm

We are also offering members the chance to sponsor a race. We only have 8 races available for sponsoring and all proceeds will go towards our junior golf development fund.

If you would be interested in sponsoring a race, the cost will be £50 and you will be included in our race night brochure, be given a reserved table on the night (if you can attend) along with refreshments and a slot in my newsletter to promote your business.

Click here if you would like to sponsor a race