Updates for the new season from Andy Pearce:

Thanks to everyone who has put their names forward to play Division One Seniors Avalon golf this year.

There is good news that due to more clubs entering a Seniors team, the top two divisions will have the full standard Avalon league complement of six teams, up from the five we had last year, giving us ten fixtures. As introduced last year, there will not be an end-of-season set of play-off matches, so winning the league will decide the champions. The two-up/two-down promotion & relegation will remain in place between the three divisions.

The Avalon Seniors divisions all have a WHS Handicap Index cap of 20.0 imposed, so players higher than this are capped before the match handicaps are calculated. This is done by (a) calculating your Course Handicap (CH), based on your WHS Index/Slope Rating of the course (including from 1^st April the new “Course Rating minus Par” adjustment ; (b) allocating shots based on 90% of the handicap difference from the lowest CH player in the four-ball.

For those who are new to this league, the match format is five pairs playing 4BBB match play (off the white tees). Points are won for each pairing’s result and the overall match result, with more points for away successes than home ones.