Blue Wins Again on the Last Hole

Four Points Clear at Noon, Level at Two, and Home by a Half

Blue keep the Cup 10½ to 9½. In thirty-three years only the 12–12 tie of 2000 has been closer: this is the fifth Cup settled by a single point, after 1994, 1995, 2011 and last October, and the second of them running. The other nineteen matches finished level at 9½ apiece, so it came down to the last pair on the course. Ron George stood on the 18th tee one up on Kelly Turk and halved the hole, which won the match and the point. Had he lost it the match would have been halved and the Cup would have finished 10–10, which under the Cup's own rule would still have left it with Blue as the side holding it — exactly as happened to Blue in 2000, the only tie in thirty-three years.

The scoreline hides a weekend that moved constantly. Blue were a point down inside the first half hour on Saturday, three clear by ten, a point behind by half eleven, level at lunch, three clear again by four and pegged back to 5–5 by five. On Sunday they went four points clear by noon and were level again two hours later. At no point on either day did either side look like running away with it.

How Sunday moved

From the feed

Sunday's best thread by a distance came out of match 15, where Tom Bres spent five hours filing dispatches about the man beating him. Brad Juday holed from off the green on the 3rd — "he's even par after three" — then from ten feet off the green on the 4th and walked it in, then from twenty feet on the 5th. By the 7th Bres had finally won a hole and was reporting it through gritted teeth: "Art pars seven to finally win a hole, mutters to himself. Brad can't keep doing this. Can he?" He could. On the 8th, Bres noted, Juday went back to the bag, abandoned what he called the grandpa game, and put a driver in the fairway alongside him. Juday won 5&3, and the only hole Bres took late came when he declined to concede a three-footer and Juday missed it.

Match 17 produced the line of the weekend. Bill George had punched out of a tree into the water on the 1st, chipped in for par, and watched Jimmy Gurney hole from twenty feet to halve it anyway. Four holes later, with both men looking at short ones, George offered the obvious: "Billy said good-good, Jimmy chose violence." George then almost chipped in for eagle on the 7th, settled for a birdie from the back fringe, and won the match 4&3.

Match 14 was the one nobody could win. Bres reported that Blake and Grace had each separately driven back to the tee on the 7th; Blake's own summary of the hole was "algebra on 7 — Grace beats Blake (X−1)", and by the 12th somebody had concluded that "X+1 seems to be the most carded score." It was halved, which felt generous to both of them.

Elsewhere: Ron George holed from thirty-five feet for par in the last match on the course, and on the 12th of that same match Kelly Turk had what the feed records only as a "wrong ball issue" — a rookie's introduction to the format. Dennis Hackett rolled in a forty-foot bender for par on the 12th as Adam Hackett lipped out. And Paul, watching rather than playing, contributed the weekend's entire body of spectator commentary in three posts: "GO RED!!!", "Why isn't Haas checking in?", and, at ten past twelve with his man three down, "Get your shit together Gurney."

Four men who did not lose

Four players went 3–0: Brad Juday, Mark Williams, Jon DeAngelis and — on debut — Jordan Jabbori. A rookie going unbeaten through three matches is rare enough; doing it while his playing partner from the parimutuel also went unbeaten, and the pair of them taking the pot on cards written for them in absentia, is the sort of weekend that gets brought up every October from now on. Ron George Sr. won both his matches before sitting out Sunday.

At the other end, four men took nothing from three: Tom Bres, Dennis Hackett, Frank George and John Waldron. Bres and Hackett losing all six between them is the hardest result of the weekend to square with the record book — they went in as the best Foursomes pair in Cup history at 6–1–0, lost that match 4&3, and lost everything else too.

Red's three hottest hands, two of them absent

Take the last five Cups together and the three best records in the field all belong to Red players. Vince Olenik is 7–0–1 since 2022, the best mark of anyone who has played six or more in that span; he was on the roster this year and did not play a match. Paul Morgan is 8–1–3 over the same five Cups and was not on the roster at all. The third is Jon DeAngelis, who did play, and who went 3–0. Red lost by a single point.

DeAngelis is 10–2–1 since 2022, and three of those five Cups have been clean sweeps — 3–0 in 2022, 3–0 in 2023 and 3–0 again this weekend. The only weekend that broke the run was 2024, when he went 0–2–1. He is in his 32nd Cup and has now played 94 matches, more than anyone bar Ron George and Dennis Hackett, and he is playing the best golf of the lot.

Two men who do not lose on Sunday

The singles are where Bill George and Adam Hackett quietly make their living, and both added to it. Hackett beat Dennis Hackett 3&1 to go to 5–0 in singles: five played, five won, since 2022. Only one man has ever been unbeaten in singles over more matches — Bill Sedwick, 9–0–5 in fourteen — and he needed five halves to do it. Hackett has simply won all five.

Bill George's 4&3 over Jimmy Gurney takes him to 7–1–2 in ten singles, an 80 per cent return that is the third-best mark of anyone with eight or more, behind only Jeff Hackett and Sedwick. He won his first five, lost once, halved twice, and has now won the last two. It was also the fourth time he and Gurney have met on a Sunday, and George leads that 3–1 — a fair return on what the preview called the quiet grudge match.

A hundred for Ron George

Ron George won the last match on the course 1 up, and it was his 100th career match — he is the first man to reach the mark. He needed only to halve the 18th and did, which is a thin margin on which to settle both a Cup and a hundredth match. He arrived at the weekend on 97 and is now clear of Dennis Hackett on 96 and Jon DeAngelis on 94, with Jamie Grace on 93 behind them. Bob Walters and Ron George Sr. both went past 75 over the weekend, and Will Bass past 25.

The partnership table moved

Two of the pairings the betting money liked best went backwards. Frank George and Rick Gordon, who went into Saturday as the fourth-best partnership in Cup history, lost match 10 and dropped to seventh at 5–2–1. Dennis Hackett and Tom Bres fell from fifth to ninth, now 7–4–0. Going the other way, Mark Williams and Ron George climbed from tenth to eighth after their 5&4 in the morning, and Bob Walters and Mark Williams moved from 22nd to 17th.

And again, the 18th green

Nine of the twenty matches went the full distance, 45 per cent, against a long-run average of 36. Four of those nine were won by a single hole and one was halved. It is the fourth time in five years the figure has sat at or above 40 per cent — 2023 was 46, 2024 43, 2022 40 — which is either a run of tight golf or a quiet argument that the handicaps are doing their job.

Twenty years, and not a point between them

One number fell out of the record when this result went in. Take the last twenty Cups, 2007 through 2026, and the two sides have scored 202½ points each. Four hundred and five points across twenty Octobers, and the series is dead level.

What the handicap sheet said, and what happened

September's reading of the handicap sheet closed on a claim worth testing: that across every Cup match ever played, single-figure men win 53 per cent of the time and 20-handicappers 45, so the strokes narrow the gap but never erase it. This weekend the gap did not narrow, it widened. The scratch-to-9 band came in at 54 per cent, right on its long-run mark; the 20-and-over band managed 37, eight points below its own average. The 15-to-19 group fell from 48 to 38.

That piece also noted that Red carried the higher team average, 14.2 to 13.2, so the strokes would flow from Blue to Red, and that history said Blue shouldn't mind. Blue didn't. They gave the shots away all weekend and won by a point.

The band that actually decided it was the middle. Players between 10 and 14 went 7–2, a 78 per cent return against a long-run 53, and almost all of it was two men: Jon DeAngelis at 11 and Jordan Jabbori at 12, unbeaten in six matches between them. The article had flagged DeAngelis for matching the best number of his career, an 11 first set in 1996. He then went 3–0 off it.

Where the sheet read it wrong was at the top end, and it read it wrong in both directions. It noted that Brad Juday had drifted from 15 in 2021 to 19 now, and that Mark Williams had sat at 21 for three straight years. Those two went 3–0 and 3–0, the only men to sweep the weekend alongside DeAngelis and Jabbori. Meanwhile the four who took nothing from three were a 15, a 19, a 20 and a 21. The high handicaps did not play badly so much as play at both extremes: they produced every clean sweep bar two and every winless card in the field.

As for the headline movers, both came in quietly. Bob Walters, eight strokes better than he was in 2021 and playing the lowest number of his 26 Cups, went 2–1. Jimmy Gurney, at a career-best 7, also went 2–1. And the man the piece described as drifting the other way, Vince Olenik, never teed it up.

Sunday's ten are at the top of this page and Saturday's are directly below, with every match of the weekend on the 2026 summary.

Five All, and Three Matches Decided on the Last Green

Blue won the morning 3–2, Red won the afternoon 3–2, and the 33rd Concord Cup goes into Sunday level at five apiece. It is the seventh time in thirty-three Cups that Saturday has finished square, and the second running. Of the six before it Blue took four, but the honest answer is that a level Saturday tells you nothing at all — in the twenty-six Cups where somebody did lead overnight, that side went on to win twenty-two times. Tomorrow starts from nothing.

The morning

Four of the five Four-Ball matches went all the way to the 18th green. Match 1 was the wildest: Roger Blake, filing dispatches all day, had Red three up after three holes and summed it up as "they are kicking our ass." Blue got it back to all square by the 8th, led at the turn, and were level again at the 11th before Jon DeAngelis and Ron George Sr. edged clear. Blake's last two posts tell the story — "Ron Sr. carrying the red team," then, at the end, "Well played Ron Sr!" Red by one.

Match 2 swung as hard. Bill George birdied the 6th to square it, Jordan Jabbori made a par that was good enough for a birdie on the 8th, and Jimmy Gurney — never knowingly modest in the feed — filed "Jimmy playing lights out." Red went three up by the 13th before Bill George birdied the 14th and the 15th in succession, earning the nickname Birdman in Gurney's running commentary, to get it back to one. Red held on, 2 up.

Match 3 turned on putts of the kind that make a man want to lie down. Brad Juday won the second hole with a putt that, in two separate accounts, "stayed on the edge of the cup for a couple seconds and then rolled in." Tom Bres answered with what Bob Walters called a great par at the 6th, and the two of them traded net pars in what the feed recorded as an "absolute pillow fight on 5." Red nosed ahead around the turn; Blue took the lead back at the 16th and won the last to finish 2 up.

Match 4 was Jamie Grace narrating his own decline. Will Bass put one to eighteen inches, prompting "Will again…", and when the Blue pair went three up at the 11th Grace's entire report was a single unprintable syllable. He then made an eight-footer, got it back to one with three to play, and ran out of holes. Blue by one.

Match 5 was the only morning match that wasn't close, and the only one the board got badly wrong. Red went off a 2½–1 favourite; Mark Williams and Ron George won 5&4. Ron George holed from forty feet on the 6th, Rick Gordon answered from twenty-five on the 7th, and after that it was all Blue. The closing note, on Williams: "Remmo pars 14 to close. Remmo played great the whole time."

The afternoon

Red took the alternate shot 3–2 and it was the two biggest Blue stroke allowances that went down. Match 6 gave Blake and John Waldron eleven shots, the largest allowance of the weekend, and they changed the lead seven times in the first ten holes — Waldron produced what Blake called "another side door" to square it at the 7th — before Gurney and DeAngelis pulled away after the turn. Red 3&1.

Match 7, the one the whole parimutuel hung on, changed hands nine times. Blue led by two at the 7th, Red led by two at the 13th, it was all square again at the 15th, and Jabbori and Grace won the last to take it 2 up. Match 8 was almost as tight for thirteen holes — Ron George Sr. holed from fifteen feet to halve the 11th — before Red ran out the 3&2 winners.

Blue's two came early and never wobbled. Match 9 opened with a scene Bill George reported in full: "Billy hits into water on one, Brad also hits into water. Art hits in water on two, DH also hits in water. All square." From that start Juday and George went four up by the 9th and won 4&3 — against Bres and Dennis Hackett, who came in 6–1–0 as a Foursomes pair and were the one thing on the board the betting money was sure about. Match 10 was the same shape: Bob Walters and Mark Williams three up by the 6th and home 4&3 over Frank George and Rick Gordon.

From the feed

The check-in page took 182 posts across the day from the first tee to the last green, and the best of them had nothing to do with the golf. The opening entry, the night before, was Roger Blake asking what time anybody was actually teeing off. The first score posted on Saturday morning was Glenn Peggs filing a result for a match that hadn't started, followed by "ignore Glenn score update" and, from Grace, "Glenn is trying." And the single best thing anyone wrote all weekend arrived on Friday afternoon: "On #4 Glenn picked my ball up from the fairway and threw it backward 70 yards under a tree. He has a pretty good arm." To which Frank George replied, "Good to hear Peggs arm is in good shape."

Two Perfect Cards, and an Awkward Question

Jimmy Gurney and Jordan Jabbori both went ten for ten and split the pot. They played the same three matches with the stakes rotated — Gurney four on Red in match 2, four on Red in match 6, two on Red in match 7; Jabbori four, four and two across the same three in a different order — and Red won all three. Nobody else broke eight.

Seven cards finished on 8: Tom Bres, Ron George, Adam Hackett, Dennis Hackett, Ron George Sr., Bill George and Bob Walters. Jon DeAngelis took 7, Mark Williams and Rick Gordon 6. Six cards finished on 4, two on 2, and John Waldron, in his first Cup, managed nought — he backed Blue in matches 1 and 6 and Red in match 4, and all three went the other way.

Match 7 decided it

The whole pool turned on the afternoon alternate shot between Adam Hackett and Will Bass in blue and Jabbori and Jamie Grace in red. The board made Blue a 4–3 favourite, and exactly two cards in the field took Red: Gurney's two points and Jabbori's four. Red won it 2 up, and that is the entire margin between the two winners and the seven men tied behind them.

The board got six of ten right. It read the morning well, calling four of the five Four-Ball matches, and read the afternoon badly, missing three of five Foursomes. The worst of it was match 5: Red went off a 2½–1 favourite carrying 24 points, the second-biggest pile on the board, and Mark Williams and Ron George won 5&4, the widest margin of the day.

Both of the long prices came in for the favourite, which is the opposite of what this column suggested on Friday. Match 10 at Blue 6–1 finished Blue 4&3 exactly as the money said, costing Brad Juday the two points he had alone on Red; match 3 at Blue 5–1 finished Blue 1 up, costing Vince Olenik his two. So much for the record book: Frank George and Rick Gordon, the 5–1–1 partnership nobody would touch, lost to a pair who had been 3–3–1.

The awkward part

Both winning cards were written by me. Gurney and Jabbori hadn't sent picks in, so under the rule in the email I filled them in from a sentence of description each — a Spartan who doesn't carry a hedge, and a rookie who follows the man who brought him. Both cards backed Red in the two matches those men were actually playing, and both of those matches came in.

In fairness to everyone else: the picks were made blind, before a single other card had been seen, and they were published here in full before a ball was struck. In fairness to the suspicious: the other two cards I wrote finished on 8 and 4, so the method is hardly infallible. Make of it what you will, preferably at the bar.

Bob Goes Down, Vinnie Goes Up: Reading the 2026 Handicap Sheet

Twenty-one players, an average handicap of 13.7, a median of 11, and a spread from Rick Gordon and Jimmy Gurney at 7 to Ron George Sr. at 24. That's the 2026 field, and it's the highest field average since 2017. Three years ago the Cup average bottomed out at 11.4, the lowest in the event's history; it has climbed back every year since. Nearly a quarter of this year's field is a 20 or higher, the largest share since 2015, even while 38 percent are still single digits. The middle is disappearing: this is a field of low handicaps and high ones.

The headline mover is Bob Walters. In 2018 he played off 21, his career worst. Since then it has gone 16, 16, 15, 11, 10 and now 8 — the lowest number of his 26 Cups, and eight strokes better than he was in 2021. Nobody in the field has moved that far in that direction. His career average is 15.5, so the man teeing it up this October is playing about seven strokes better than his own career norm.

Running the other way is Vince Olenik. Vinnie arrived in 2001 at a 3 and got to a 2 in 2002, and for years he was the scratch-level yardstick everyone else was measured against; his career average of 5.9 is still the lowest of anyone in this year's field. He comes in at 11 this time, the highest of his 25 Cups. It's a gentle slope — 10, 10, 10, 11, 9, 11 across the last six — but the direction is unmistakable, and the strokes are starting to flow the other way.

They're not alone in either direction. Jimmy Gurney is at 7, his best ever and eight shots better than the 15 he brought to his first Cup in 2016. Jon DeAngelis, in his 32nd Cup, matches the best number of his career at 11, first set back in 1996. Will Bass has gone 21 to 11 since 2018, and Rick Gordon keeps hovering around his 2023 career low of 5. On the other side of the ledger, Brad Juday has drifted from 15 in 2021 to 19 now, Mark Williams has sat at 21 for three straight years, and Frank George is back up to 21 after an 18 last fall.

The longest arc in the data belongs to Dennis Hackett. He played the first Cup in 1994 off a 7. Thirty-one Cups later he's a 15, having touched 16 in 2022. Tom Bres has gone the other way lately, 24 in 2024 down to 20 now, and Ron George Sr., first seen in 1997 at 17, has settled in at 24 for the third year running. Meanwhile Ron George, the only man to play all 33 Cups, has barely budged: 13 as a rookie, 7 at his best in 2012, and an 8 this year.

Four players in this field weren't here last fall. Matt Haas returns at 8 after sitting out 2025, close to the 6 he carried in 2023. Roger Blake is back for his third Cup, and remarkably he has been a 21 in every one of them — 2021, 2024 and 2026. The two newcomers are John Waldron at 19 and Jordan Jabbori at 12, which lands Jabbori right on the field's median. Seven players from last year's rosters aren't in this one, and the field has shrunk from 24 to 21.

By team, Red carries the higher average at 14.2 to Blue's 13.2, so on balance the strokes will flow from Blue to Red. History says Blue shouldn't mind. Across every Cup match ever played, players at 9 or better have won 53 percent of the time and those at 20 or above just 45 percent, with the 15-to-19 group at 48. The strokes narrow the gap; they don't erase it. Which is worth remembering when the pairings go up and somebody complains that he's giving away too many.