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Bandula Weerasinghe was outstanding
The north east monsoon meet was a rousing success despite short spells of sharp showers. Much credit to Kumar Boralessa and Sarath Piyaratne who dovetailed all the arrangements superbly. The crowning Award ceremony was fun filled lavishly sponsored by entrepreneur and Luxury Apartment Developer Nimal Perera of Premier Pacific International Ltd.

The Clifford Cup was established in 1913 to honour Sir Hugh Clifford who was 4 times President of the Royal Colombo Golf Club. Senaka Kumara sparkled on both days with commendable scores of 64 & 68 making a total 10 under par nett. A great performance by a comparative rookie. Coming behind was "Facso" Abeywardena who has returned to the game signalling warning of what to expect in his forthcoming rounds. That massive man Bandula Weerasinghe was third.

Macinlay Quaish
Podgy Lalin Senadhira had a helluva time battling his brother-in-law Anel de Silva who is no doubt the better of the two. Senadhira was close fisted with his strokes, dished them out miserly and reaped the benefit with a good nett 66 beating De Silva by one stroke. Senadhira took the Trophy and the De Silva twins fixed the celebrations in style.

Centenary Trophy
This Trophy was presented by the Royal Colombo Golf Club to commemorate the Centenary in 1979. The winner has to record the best nett scores over 4 rounds.
Nilika was captured beaming wide smiles of great glee through the award ceremony basking in the glory collected by Bandula Weerasinghe in a masterly display of measured, calculated and stress free golf over 2 weekends. His masterly rounds were 68, 68, 72 & 69 totaling 277 which is an excellent 7 under par performance.

The portly guy finds the gap to swing right and as Dart players say he is "middle for diddle" all the time off the tee. He embraced the handsome Trophy, did the same to Nilika and celebrated incessantly. Sheron Fernando, another up and coming stoke player registered another creditable performance with a score of 284 to come 2nd. Manjula Karunaratne, the piping favorite went cold in the third round with a naughty 75 and dropped to third place. He failed to click with Niloo Jayatilleke's high tech advice over sensitive shots.

His head was up at chipping point to err and lose strokes and the Trophy. My dark horse salt and pepper Ranjith Wirasinha was moving superbly laughing all the way. Then "Sasgahala" he crept into the bunker on the 8th. He was flirting with 5 on the 8th when he took aim with his sand wedge and when he finished his stoke according to Jeremy Carter his disobedient titlist had careered into the bowels of the Car Park and landed on a Land Rover. He finished with nine losing 4 strokes and the 2nd prize very sadly. He was clowning incessantly at the 19th when I left him for a much delayed lunch on Sunday.

Hundreds
Arivind Mahendra and Nataraj Ramiah struck stylish twin hundreds. M.D.P. Dias never seems to recover from strayers and visits to ponds. Sankya Ukwatte, Ananda Jayasekera, Errol Weerasinghe and A. Mylvaganam picked up hundreds to add to their individual collections in the record books.

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