Luck of the Irish for McDermott

Gerry McDermott invoked the luck of the Irish to win the BAS-sponsored Blackball competition, returning an individual Stableford score of 42 points, one clear of Chris Ware. Also in the individual score prizes, presented by Sadek Ebrahim, BAS’s chief marketing & business development officer, were Janet McAlpine (40), Ahmed Al Noaimi (38) and Farooq Ahmed (38).

This Awali Golf Club competition is unique in that each group of three players also forms a team, with each player alternatively playing with a black ball, and the score for the black ball providing the team score. Reliable sources reported that some players thought the black ball was possessed with a mysterious power, and that playing with this ‘poisoned chalice’ guaranteed a poor score, otherwise known as ‘the curse of the black ball’.

This power came to the fore most potently when one player seemed to sabotage his team’s score almost before he had started play, by losing the black ball on the second stroke of his round. As conditions of play did not allow a replacement, this succeeded in setting a new low in the history of the Blackball team score, at 0 points.

However, the curse of the black ball was dismissed as unsubstantiated folklore by other players, especially by the team winners of Ahmed Al Noaimi, Farooq Ahmed and Saleh Musbah, who achieved a total score of 37 points, whilst the team of Janet McAlpine, Dave Bridger and Arunava Banerjee lost on countback with the same score.