Winter 4 Ball Final - Congratulations to Crail

Today in mainly dry, sunny and blustery conditions (one heavy shower) the final of the Winter 4 balls was played in friendly company on the Eden in St Andrews between Crail (Ali Townson and Irene Alexander) and Aberdour (Norma Pajak and Kathryn Murray). Crail were early leaders but Aberdour nipped at their heels on several occasions, Crail winning 4/3. The course was in good shape, dry underfoot, though holes 14 and 15 were still out of play being largely under water.

Thanks to both sides for showing some good golf and to not giving the referee any difficult decisions!!

A big thank you to our 2 supporters Mandy and Irene who came for the first 9, and to St Andrews for the generous courtesy of the course.

Susie

Captain

Captain Susie with the finalists in St Andrews

Presidents Cup - Sunday 7th April 2024

With the unprecedented levels of rain this week and the forecast for the weekend not looking much better, in conjunction with the team at Burntisland GC we have decided to postpone the competition on Sunday. Your competition accounts will be refunded the entry fee today and we will post details of the rescheduled event on the website and by email once we have a new date agreed. 

Here's hoping that the rain eases up sometime soon and our next fixture (Spring Meeting on 21 April) will run as planned - please note entries for this event are still open for anyone who has not yet signed up!

If anyone has any queries regarding the rescheduling of this competition then please email the competition convenor Karin Sharp who can be reached at fclgaweb@googlegroups.com

Winter 4BBB - Divisions 1A & 1B

The winners of the Winter 4BBB:

Division 1A winners are Aberdour with a clean sweep of wins and 8 points

Division 1B winners are Crail on 5 points, same points tally as Pitfirrane, Crail win on most holes up over all the matches played

Well done to both teams who will now play the Final at The Eden course, St Andrews on Sunday 14th April at 10.00am

Spectators are more than welcome to go along and watch

Good luck to both teams 

Scottish Women's Amateur Tour

Have you heard about the new Scottish Women's Amateur Tour (SWAT)? The tour has been created to provide women amateurs in Scotland with more competitive playing opportunities. 

Register now to play in one or more of the 36 hole fixtures at top venues across Scotland. You don't need to be highly competitive to sign up and help support the tour in its inaugural season.  

New System Update - Training session dates and Subscription Invoices

Following our December communication outlining our move to a new member management and tournament software platform, can I first of all thank you for your patience as we have made that transition. 

We are now in a position to update you on a number of training sessions that we plan to run before the start of the new playing season. The training sessions will cover how to pay your annual subscription and how to enter FCLGA competitions via your Scottish Golf APP. As outlined before, if you could please ensure that you have the APP installed on either a phone or tablet, that you have an active sign-in to your account and that you bring a credit or debit card with you to any of the in person sessions, as we will walk you through how to pay your subs and how to top-up your competition account to enable entry to the competitions of your choice. 

The training will take place as follows:

Tuesday 27 February @ Kirkcaldy Golf Club - this is a drop-in session which will run between 3-6pm

Wednesday 28 February via Zoom at 6:30pm (link will be sent to those who register nearer the time)

Sunday 17 March @ Balbirnie Golf Club - this is a drop-in session which will run between 3-4:30pm

To ensure we make the appropriate arrangements with the venues and have enough people along to support the training activity for the in-person sessions, we ask that you kindly complete the undernoted form to advise if you can attend or not. It is our intention to record the Zoom session and we will look to send this out via email to anyone who is unable to attend any of the sessions. 

Click here to indicate which session you wish to attend, or to confirm if you cannot attend any of the dates

We will be issuing the subscription notifications on Monday 26 February so that we can show people during the training sessions how to make those payments via credit or debit card. In addition, we will be opening entries for our full fixture list on Tuesday 27 February, again so we can demonstrate during the training sessions, how members can top up their competition accounts and enter the events of their choosing. Until that time, there will be nothing visible for members under the Fife County Ladies Golfing Association "club" in the Scottish Golf APP, so please don't be concerned if you login and only see your handicap record!

County members who regularly use the Scottish Golf APP either for entry to their own club events or national events and are familiar with the functionality, should be able to easily navigate between your "clubs" (for the purpose of APP utilisation FCLGA is designated as a club) and the proposed training sessions may be less relevant for you to attend. For everyone else, we would encourage you to consider how familiar you are with the Scottish Golf APP and to attend one of the sessions such that we can support you in understanding how to navigate this new system and remove any concerns that you might have, especially on the payment side. 

As mentioned before, the key benefits of this new member management and tournament system are a reduction in costs for FCLGA as the platform is free of charge to use and much improved administration and reconciliation of finances for our volunteer committee. Your support in embracing change and making a smooth transition to this new system is much appreciated but as always if there are any specific queries then please drop an email to fclgaweb@googlegroups.com.

System update and feedback please - a message from FCLGA President Marina

As we are fast approaching the end of another year, I thought I would drop a quick note to keep you advised on the key activities of your County Committee during the “off-season”. Those of you who attended the Prizegiving and AGM at the end of October, will recall I noted that the County would be moving to a new IT membership and competition platform ahead of the 2024 playing season and we are well advanced with the planning of that move. The benefits for the County committee (and in particular the Treasurer & competition convenors) in terms of improved administration functions are significant and fortunately also come with no financial cost. In addition we hope that for all members they will also see benefits from moving to a new system, with an improved process for collection of annual subscriptions, competition entry and most importantly automatic returns of scores from all qualifying competitions to the CDH (which is a function that we have not had available to us for the last 2 seasons).

We intend to hold a number of training sessions (both in person and online) during February to focus on ensuring that everyone is clear and comfortable with how to pay their annual subscription and how to enter the competitions that are scheduled for 2024. We recognise that a number of you traditionally pay your subscription at this time of year and are grateful for your patience in waiting on us having the new system set up – we currently estimate that invoices will be issued in late January and we will ensure that we provide clear instructions and training detail as to how these should be paid.

The new platform is provided by Scottish Golf and is accessed via their APP or website – we hope that the vast majority of playing members will already have a login to one of these systems, as it is where your handicap information is stored. For anyone that hasn’t registered with Scottish Golf for a player account, then please take a look at the instructions here and proceed with setting it up in advance of our training sessions being delivered. Should anyone experience any difficulty in getting set-up then please contact Karin or Lorraine who will be happy to assist. Please email fclgaweb@googlegroups.com and either Karin or Lorraine will come back to you.

More information will follow in early 2024 and members of the committee will be available to support this transition in the months that follow. Please look out for further communication during January which will include an option to sign up to attend a training session in February, well in advance of the 2024 season getting underway. Future communications are likely to be sent from the new system and will have a different look, but please don't delete it as suspicious! The new sender address will be Fife County Ladies Golf Association (no-reply@scottishgolf.org), you may wish to add this to your contacts, which will help make sure messages come to your inbox.

In addition at the AGM I mentioned that we were looking to issue a survey to obtain feedback from you all and I am pleased to be able to share with you the first of these surveys here, which is around website use. We are keen to understand what works well on the current website, what could be better and any other feedback you may have, this is important, as we have the opportunity to move the website to the new system and want to take advantage of a fresh start to bring you relevant content. You'll also see a section covering the AGM and dinner, we are keen to understand if there is a better time of the week for it to be held.

As we are already committed to a 2024 fixture list we have focused the topic of this survey on wider membership services and we plan to issue a second competition focused survey in the Spring of 2024. We would encourage you to complete this survey and provide us with your honest feedback!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Marina

President